BATTLEFORD — This coming year promises to be an active one for Battlefords Regional Community Coalition with a number of projects in the works.
Town council in Battleford heard the latest update on the activities of the BRCC from co-ordinator Tom Howard at their meeting Monday. The BRCC includes the town, the city of North Battleford and five area First Nations.
In his presentation, Howard indicated the organization will be focusing on three aspects in 2022.
The first, said Howard, will be anti-racism workshops. Howard called it a core part of what the BRCC is doing and said from September 2021 onward had finished four workshops and are heading to a fifth in the next six weeks. They have done workshops with the coalition’s leadership and community organization, with city and town council and administrative staff, and most recently with the region’s first responders. The next one, expected in May, will be with school divisions and Sakewew High School.
Howard said they hope to press forward with more workshops, including one with the First Nations governments as well as a second training session with the city and town.
A second initiative the BRCC is emergency management. Howard told council this came forward out of the coalition table in early 2020, when the BRCC leadership identified jurisdictional challenges and conflicts over emergency services, as well as the high cost of emergency services, especially for First Nations.
One of the things they want to do is create a regional inventory of emergency management assets.
They also want to develop a regional emergency management plan, and BRCC have made a funding application for $75,000 to the province towards that. It was a joint application to receive funding for a consultant to develop a regional management plan, but also to purchase emergency management software, which would set up a virtual emergency operations centre.
That would include not just fires but also extreme weather and major regional emergencies, said Howard. The total estimated budget for that application is $100,000 with $75,000 funded by the province and the remainder cost-shared among the participants in the application.
The last item is an initiative that already received funding from Indigenous Services Canada called Sharing a Vision.
Howard said the focus of the project is conducting community engagement sessions in the region on the future of health care, education, recreation and cultural services in the post-pandemic world.
The goal is to harmonize and synchronize those at a regional level, and also to create more Indigenous-friendly spaces, Howard said. He told council the project will also include creating a regional conceptual plan for facility development to fill gaps in those areas outlined above. A project steering committee has been set up including representatives from the city, town, Little Pine and Lucky Man.
“Those three things — Sharing a Vision, emergency management and antiracism — are the core parts of the BRCC’s work for 2022 as we’re planning out for the year ahead,” said Howard.
