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Whistler council hits the advocacy trail

Council brief: Ministerial meetings, conferences abound in council’s first early months
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ACTIVE ADVOCACY Whistler’s mayor and council have been busy attending conferences and meetings in recent weeks. File photo by Braden Dupuis

Whistler’s new mayor and council have been out and about in recent weeks, attending conferences and meetings in the hopes of building relationships and better advocating for local residents.

Whistler Mayor Jack Crompton recently sat down with Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz to talk about shared priorities moving forward, Crompton said in his mayor’s report at the Feb. 12 council meeting.

“We talked transportation, we talked housing—those items which are at the top of the list for our organization,” Crompton said.

“It was a useful conversation.”

Further to that, Crompton, along with Councillors Duane Jackson, Cathy Jewett and John Grills, also had the opportunity recently to meet with the provincial ministers for tourism and municipal affairs for housing. “It starts our advocacy,” Crompton said.

“We want to be good advocates for our community moving forward, and I found those to be productive conversations.”

Whistler’s new council has also been active on the convention front, with Grills attending the IMPACT Sustainable Travel and Tourism conference in Victoria last month (https://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/whistler/bracing-for-impact/Content?oid=13093068), Councillor Jen Ford taking in a conference on making all roadways safer, and Jackson attending a housing conference.

The conference highlighted the fact that housing is challenging for all communities, “and that changing demographics and household formations are outpacing the delivery of housing,” Jackson said. “So housing is a crisis that we are not the only ones to be faced by it … in general it was a great conference, (I) made some good contacts and bringing some notes back.”

Topping it all off, following the Feb. 12 council meeting, Whistler’s mayor and council drove north to Mount Currie for a late meeting with Lil’wat Nation council.

“(It) will be our first opportunity to meet with them and introduce ourselves, so (we’re) excited about that,” Crompton said.