Chris Pettingill

On a personal level, my partner and I went from 2 ICE cars to a single plug-in hybrid over 8 years ago. We both ride our bikes instead of using the car when we can, and our home does not use gas.

As a Councillor, I have been involved in Climate Caucus since its inception. I have sponsored and written many resolutions regarding climate issues that have been successfully debated and supported by the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM). I have been able to speak directly to provincial ministers about climate-related (and many other) issues through my involvement with the Lower Mainland LGA and UBCM. I have been a strong advocate for our Community Climate Action Plan, no-gas covenants, and the zero-carbon step code in local development.

I have pushed for stronger climate-focused language in the Regional Growth Strategy adopted by the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District (SLRD). As a Director for the SLRD, I see the tangible (and incredibly expensive and disruptive) impacts of climate change more visibly than I've seen in Squamish so far.

The price of fossil fuels (which are driving climate change) are pushing up the prices for nearly everything. Food prices are further being increased by climate-change-driven crop failures. While not the only factors for affordability, reducing our need for expensive fuels, and slowing climate change are critical opportunities to improve affordability.

I would look at major industry taxation from a different starting place. We need to understand our wants and needs as a community, and moving to a 10-year financial plan this past year was a big step. (Most municipalities still only have 5-year plans). While we've done good work so far, there are still a number of things we have yet to add to the later years in our financial plan. As we get clearer on how quickly we want to address the items in our plan, we can think about how we want to split the total financial requirements between tax classes.

The wants and needs in the community are quite high at the moment, and growth doesn't seem to be slowing down. Existing residents and businesses are feeling economic pressures, and I would like to see a growing tax base to support what our community needs, and ideally also provide relief to existing payers.

Squamish was successful in getting the UBCM membership to support advocating the province on improved air quality regulations, monitoring, and enforcement. This will become part of UBCM's advocacy to the province. Both the District of Squamish, and the Lower Mainland Local Government Association spoke to ministers and ministries about this topic at the recent UBCM conference. I know that Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is paying attention to this topic as well, and I'm hopeful that our health authority and provincial ministries will take this issue seriously, especially given the eventual visibility of the WLNG flarestack to millions of international visitors.

I am hopeful that VCH will get adequate baseline monitoring for pollutants in place (especially in relation to carcinogens) and that this will continue during WLNG operations. If VCH is unable to do so, then I would advocate for the next Council to fill any gaps in monitoring to help ensure that regulators can fulfill their responsibilities to keep us safe.

Neither Garibaldi at Squamish, nor the Cheema Lands are within our current Growth Management Boundary. Given that we have plenty of developable area within our Boundary, and also considering our infrastructure deficits, and global affordability challenges, I wouldn't want to expand outside of the Boundary prematurely.

North Crumpit is within the Growth Boundary, and is already going through a neighbourhood planning process. I would hold this project to our development requirements and policies to ensure riparian and greenspace protection, accessibility, smart land use, and other things that help protect livability and manage affordability.

For additional clarity, when I think about affordability, it's not just about affordability today, but also how the price of units are likely to evolve over time, and the cost burden over time of the related infrastructure. The latter is important, because it impacts the tax requirements for all residents over time - not just the residents in a particular neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that we need to update our emergency and evacuation plans. And, it's also clear that the province is increasingly unwilling or unable to fund important programs like FireSmart. I think our community is going to have to step in (yet again) to gaps left by the province in terms of emergency and risk planning and mitigation. A failure to do so could impact our safety, and things like the cost of insurance. Unfortunately, doing this work will put additional demands on our tax base. So, of course we should also continue demanding that upper levels of government play a bigger role in managing the impacts of climate change - especially if they are going to double down on the very industries driving the need to take these actions.

This particular question is useful to highlight the sorts of tensions that we face in some of our decisions. We have requests for more highway access out of the Garibaldi Highlands, for both emergency and convenience reasons, and we have been lobbying the province about the topic (including at the recent UBCM conference). However, an inevitable side-effect of greater Highlands highway access is likely to be accelerated growth in the Highlands. As I've spent more time in my Council role, I've become more aware of some of these unintended and/or undesirable consequences of our decisions.

I'm very thankful for the efforts we've been putting into our relationship with Squamish Nation. If we continue to work on the commitments that we have made with Squamish Nation in our Memorandum of Understanding, we will necessarily be collaborating on stewardship in ways that support reconciliation. I'm very proud of the work we've done with Squamish Nation, grateful for the personal relationships I've developed, and I see a bright future if we continue that good work.