OKANAGAN LIFE
FUTURE SHOCK ROUND TABLE
November 22, 2007
PART 1 – INTRODUCTIONS
LUKE REDD: I’m going to moderate – and Laurie and I – this is Laurie Carter our senior editor at Okanagan Life. Maybe we can just go around the room and briefly introduce ourselves. We can start with you Gail.
TEMPLE: I’m Gail Temple – I’m a development manager for two development companies in the valley and I’m also president of the Urban Development Institute, which is the professional chapter that represents the industry.
STRACHAN: I’m Gary Strachan, actually I work for a development company now too, but I’m primarily a winemaker and so I’m involved in agriculture.
JANMAAT: I’m John Janmaat and I’m an economist teaching at UBC-Okanagan and within that my areas of interest are environmental economics and specifically the economics of water resources.
LARRATT: I’m Heather Larratt and I’ve been working in this area as an aquatic consultant for about 28 years and I also work with the mining industry on aquatic reclamation.
GREENWELL: Geoff Greenwell, I’m a management consultant and property developer. I work primarily with First Nations, now work for the Tribal Council here in the Okanagan, the Okanagan Nation Alliance, and I develop property in partnership with First Nations in the north of the province, right now in the Prince Rupert region.
MURPHY: I’m Mary Ann Murphy. I hold a cross-appointment on aging and I’m an associate professor at UBC-Okanagan.
STOCKDALE: I’m Peter Stockdale and I’m retired. I’ve been retired for 10 years and I retired to be an Okanagan organic farmer. I left my job in New Zealand to retire back to Canada.
CHEN: My name is Isabel Chen. I’m a registered architect. I live in Penticton. I served on the board of Smart Growth BC for two terms and I live on a fourth generation family farm.
HAUBRICH: I’m Peter Haubrich, I’m Dutch and I came to the Okanagan three years ago. I created the Okanagan Research and Innovation Centre, which is a business incubator, located at the radio telescope, the only one in Canada.
LOVEGROVE: Gord Lovegrove, assistant professor at the school of engineering at UBC-Okanagan. My passion is sustainable transportation; my area of research is sustainable road safety, sustainable development.
REDD: So – one of the things I was curious about, are any of you really long time residents, over 10 years, 20 years. Mary Ann, Isabel, Gary – 30 years, 12 years for you Gail.
STOCKDALE: I’ve had a farm here since ’84, but didn’t come back to start farming it ’til 10 years ago.
REDD: How about you Heather, how long have you been here?
LARRATT: 28 years.
REDD: 28 years. And John, I know you’re recently here.
JANMAAT: I’m on the other side of it.
REDD: Don’t be embarrassed. I want both perspectives here, that’s why you’re here.
JANMAAT: Three months. I did grow up in Chilliwack.
REDD: How about you, Geoff?
GREENWELL: Ah, lived here for seven years but my wife went to high school here before going to university so, we have family here. So we’ve been coming here for about 15 years. But I’ve lived here for seven.
REDD: Gord, how about you?
LOVEGROVE: I lived here in ’96-’97. Then I got headhunted down to UBC in Vancouver. Came back two years ago, 2005. So what’s that, off and on for the last 11 years.
REDD: Okay. I myself have been here for about six-and-a-half years and I’m a transplant from Denver, CO.
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PART 2 – IMAGINING THE VALLEY’S FUTURE
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LUKE REDD: What I’d like to get to now is, in this introductions part of the roundtable, I want to get from you all what your idea – what makes up the ideal Okanagan community in your minds? What are the elements that create that? What are those for you? We can start with anybody.
PETER HAUBRICH: Can I start? Maybe a community where you can work, live and play in a close proximity and also have affordable housing.
REDD: So affordable housing is key?
HAUBRICH: Is key. Everybody talks about affordable housing but if you create an environment where you can work and play and live, because the barriers or the balances between working and living are changing, so if you create an environment where that is possible, then maybe we create interesting cities.
REDD: That’s interesting. What are some other viewpoints? We have the live, work, play aspect. What does that really encompass?
GORD LOVEGROVE: I could build on that. I could absolutely agree with that and I would add one other thing, if I could create a word picture. It would be great if I could be in a community where, walking down the street, people say, “Hi” to each other. So, sense of community, ownership of the community. People pick up litter. If somebody’s kid is lost or doing something that they shouldn't be, speak to them. Values, beliefs, shared – and a shared responsibility.
REDD: Responsibility…
LOVEGROVE: And respect. Respect.
REDD: In the way of personal freedoms, does it mean being able to drive in your car where you want to or what about those kinds of ideas? I’m speaking to you personally. That’s what I want to know, you personally, in your mind, what is your ideal Okanagan community? Do we have it now? And if we don’t, what would you like to see that we don’t have.
MARY ANN MURPHY: My ideal community is a community for all ages and I think that concept is at risk, in terms of sustainability. My ideal community is also a learning community and I’d like to see in the long run that the university and college support the life and the innovative development of the region. And my ideal community always has the lake as the centre point of our future.
REDD: Very interesting.
GAIL TEMPLE: And, building on the lake, of course — if I want to have an ideal community, it has to have clean air and clean water and it has to be a very nice place to be, that you like. And when we talk about live, work and play (and you were just saying) should we have the freedom, absolutely, we should have freedom to do whatever we choose as long as we don’t compromise other people’s freedoms later on. So, in terms of access, and should we be all driving in cars – what we should have is easy access to everything, easy, efficient access to everything – work, recreation, open spaces, all of it.
GEOFF GREENWELL: I think we have a very optimum situation now, other than Hwy 97, but I think we’re absolutely in danger of losing it. It’s not sustainable with the way that the valley is developing. My own personal beliefs would be that we should always have clean air, which we don’t frequently. We should have good drinking water.
Personally, I’d like to see a lot more equitable situation with our local First Nations than we have, which is not very equitable.
As someone who is involved with a lot of youth sport, I think it’s critical that we grab as much green space, now, as we can. Because as this population grows, and it’s growing at the speed it’s growing, we don’t have enough parks, we don’t have enough green space. If we don’t buy it now, if our politicians aren’t wise enough to buy it now and lock it up, it will be very difficult to get it back once it has houses on it.
Try to maintain a balance of the agricultural land and development land — it’s very tricky because there’s a lot of pressure on the ALR and a lot of people want to see the ALR go away and claim farmland is not sustainable. But that’s just fuelled by the lust for land right now.
PETER STOCKDALE: As a veterinarian, I’ve got the animal orientation toward things, and so I think we need food security and water security and I think that means we’ve got (to amplify your point) we’ve really got to worry about our agricultural land.
And I think we need attainable housing. When you hear the condo’s going to be a million – I was at a meeting last night where I’m sure that the average salary would have been somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000 – a million dollar condo looks a little bit out of reach.
And the other thing, transportation. I’m sure we’ve got to go to some way of breaking this thing about vehicles – so mass transit, cyclists, pedestrians.
And then I think a diverse local economy so we can have all the things people have talked about.
And finally, education. We should have everything from schools and advanced university degrees and it being there for everybody if they want it. No one’s pushing them. But a great thing I’ve noticed about Canada (you can tell I wasn’t born here), whereas the British talk about equality of opportunity, Canadians live it. And now it’s going as the population separates into the wealthy and the less wealthy, opportunity for education is starting to go. I think that is an essential part of Canadian nature.
REDD: Anybody else? … I just want to move on to what all this is really about is sustainability. It’s a word that’s been used a lot and I think as words get used, used as much as this one is right now, the public sometimes can misinterpret it or it takes on new meanings in people’s minds and sometimes the original meaning gets lost. So I just wanted to know what sustainability, that word, what does it mean to you? Further than that, do you think it’s attainable?
GARY STRACHAN: I think that sustainability is only achievable if you have an integration of the community with a lot of these factors, but in addition to that, they must be within the resources, which we have within the valley. If we continue with our present expansion, we will exceed our water resources very quickly and just by virtue of the climate in the Okanagan, we also will not be able to maintain clean air.
I live in Summerland and I can look down the valley and whenever we have an inversion there’s a grey cloud over Penticton, because that’s the waist of the valley and everything gathers there. And we’re certainly facing a crisis in Summerland. We’ve had water problems and they’re going to get worse because our supply is declining and our demand is increasing. So that’s not sustainable. Somewhere the graphs are going to cross.
REDD: In most definitions of sustainability, future generations come into play here. I just wonder, we all like to say that we want to protect future generations, how do you think that actually plays out in practice? It’s easy to say that we want to protect future generations; do you think enough of us actually act that way?
GREENWELL: I think if we did, we wouldn’t all be driving single vehicles up and down the highway. As you go to watch what happens every day on Hwy 97 – there’s way too many one person/one vehicle – but, of course, what choice do you have? I think that we’re lacking the vision currently, or it hasn’t been a big enough focus to develop positive models for transit or for people to commute together. I mean, many other countries in the world have dealt with this, and we haven’t.
I think we’re developing in isolation. As a property developer myself, I look at what happens – one community develops an official community plan in complete isolation from the neighbouring community. For instance, where I live in Lake Country, they passed an official community plan last year, which I strongly opposed personally, which doesn’t allow for any multi-density dwellings. Well, what does that do? That pushes all the young people out of Lake Country to a neighbouring community. What’s that about really? It’s protectionism.
But unfortunately, in my community there’s an increasing amount of absentee owners, because it’s a desirable place to be and near the lake etc, etc. I don’t have any neighbours any more. Where I live in my area, I don’t have any neighbours. I have neighbours for four weeks a year. Halloween, my kids, there’s no point in going around here, because no one lives here. So let’s go to the nearest subdivision.
I think, as a region, our politicians have to start working together and looking at the Okanagan as a region instead of looking after their own back yard.
TEMPLE: There’s still a little bit of an (unintelligible) … when you’re talking about people have to individually commit to sustainability, absolutely.
He expressed a frustration as in what choice do we have when you say we drive to get around to where we need to be. I actually don’t think that sustainability in our valley so much is wholly dependent, necessarily, on how many people live here, it’s dependent more so on how we do things. Because we actually need a lot more density in order to have very, very efficient transportation systems.
We have to fundamentally change how we live. So, we can have individuals commit to being more sustainable, but that means that their local municipality has to commit to being sustainable because it has to embrace those things that will make those people’s lives easier – their ability to move around. Systems have to be put in place and we need higher density in order to do that.
And, of course, you just also mentioned the other great thing is commitment has to come from the individual, it has to come from the municipality or it has to come locally, it has to be regional and then ultimately it has to be global, because we all share the same natural systems.
STOCKDALE: I think one of the basics is to change people’s minds as to what they think’s important in life. And I think really, we’ve got to compare standard of living with quality of life. They’re quite different. If you’re going to emphasise standard of living, you’re going to emphasise how many iPods you have, what sort of car you drive, all that sort of thing, and that’s what I call standard of living.
But if you talk about quality of life, you talk about things like health, longevity and education. I think you have to make sure people are convinced that the quality of life, ultimately, is the way to go, rather than standard of living. One’s consumptive and one doesn’t have to be. You can have a very good quality of life and have very little.
ISABEL CHEN: Jumping on from that, I agree with everything that’s been said on this table, I can just say ditto, ditto, ditto… and I guess the thing that’s compelling to me in what’s just been said is, I think the whole model that bigger is better, more is more, has to shift.
And to your answer, can we change; I think human beings are very ingenious; we have all the tools and knowledge now to make the change. It’s whether or not that paradigm shift in the masses will come soon enough, fast enough. There’s always innovators, early adopters, it’s now I think the consciousness is here – the fact that we’re having this dialogue, the fact that it’s a second year the Okanagan is having the Building Sustainable Communities conference – is a thirst for answers, a thirst for solutions.
So I think we need to give people the tools to be able to shift. I think most people, if you’re given easy … recycling made easy, people do it – you know.
There’s all sorts of levels, like Gail says, individuals, I think we are doing things to make our footprint smaller. But much larger land use issues need to be dealt with for us to make that change in a bigger way, because transportation can’t change land use pattern. The land use pattern has to come first and I think that’s where collectively, regionally in the Okanagan, we should really work cooperatively together looking at the whole watershed as a system rather than little individual fiefdoms, where we race down to the bottom if we do that.
JOHN JANMAAT: To take off a little bit from that… The definitions of sustainability that we’ve been talking about, I think sound very common. The one that I have scribbled down here is “making choices today that don’t limit the ability of future generations to attain the same quality of life we enjoy.”
I don’t think that’s too different from what most people are saying. But the point you were making about the choices we make, I think we’ve got to find ways to make the right choices rewarded. Through what we economists talk about as incentives (falling back on my jargon). But basically, we’ve got to make sure it’s easy to do the right thing and that those who engage in behaviours or make choices that are not supporting the objective we want to pursue, pay the real costs of those, because right now there’s a lot of cases where they don’t.
MURPHY: I think for me, a stark example of the incentives that you’re talking about is that many of our local grocery stores are selling fruit that’s imported from California and other places in the US and even Mexico. It astonishes me, in this economy and with the agricultural history here, that we’re selling fruit obtained on the global market while our local producers are struggling and dying on the vine themselves. And it astonishes me that the consumer isn’t more discerning when they enter the store, that they aren’t asking for local produce – which is also, by the way, probably much fresher, healthier and less expensive.
GREENWELL: It’s disturbing, I don’t know if everyone remembers, last year, CHBC did a comparison of the cost of groceries across North America and Kelowna was the second most expensive city in North America to purchase groceries in – second only to Los Angeles – far more expensive than Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago. It amazed me, but they did a very careful study on it and then asked the question, why is Kelowna that expensive.
And I think we’re in an area where it’s become incredibly materialistic. I mean, there’s a house just being commissioned a couple of miles away from me by a young NHL hockey player and his girlfriend, 15,000 square feet! You know. Now they may have kids, hopefully they’ll have lots of them, they’ll have lots of room, but the excess is becoming abhorrent, frankly. And it’s being allowed, it’s almost being encouraged.
We’re in an extremely materialistic world and it’s getting more so. I think this is the wealthiest generation in Canada there’s ever been. There’s so much money around now, but that isn’t sustainable. How are your children ever going to attain? I mean, they’ll be living in our basements ’til they’re 60. Is it even feasible that they can achieve this? Or we die and leave it to them, I guess?
REDD: Gord, did you have something?
LOVEGROVE: I was just picking up on, it seems like the discussion is talking about excess, but I go back to what Gail said about freedom to choose, or freedom. Then John jumped in and talked a bit about, well perhaps we’ve got to add in the true costs, the true value, so it balances those choices. They still have the freedom to choose. But then Mary Ann talked about that too; start adding in the full life-cycle cost or the true cost, whatever. I’ll let John use the jargon and correct me. And that’s when I think we’ve got that balance.
And by the way, my definition of sustainability, really quickly is the Boy Scout motto (or is it Cubs), where you go into a campsite and the leader says, “Now listen, we’re leaving this place in as good or better shape than when we found it.” Except I think we’ve got to go a bit beyond that now, because we’ve really trashed planet Earth, thank you very much. But that’s a real simple way to do it, and that includes future users or future generations.
And that’s the problem. I think feedback loops, they aren’t short enough. Let’s face it, the human creature, for all the great things we do, are basically selfish and we’ve got to bring that loop a little closer. If it’s not our kids, because we don’t have any, who are we thinking of – the here and now, us. And what’s happening, we’re having less and less kids on average in Canada, so we’ve got to close that feedback loop in other ways. So if it’s not our kids bringing home the how to on recycling, which is how we got recycling in the first place, from the schools, then it’s going to have to be our pocketbooks that bring it home into our back pocket.
So then the task … is government, who set the policies, going to encourage or businesses, who set the prices, going to go there and put themselves out of business or put themselves out of office or put themselves still hanging on the vine.
How did that fruit get cheaper (or is it more expensive than the domestic fruit), because the full costs haven’t been added in. So how do we add those in?
I’ve been making some notes, furiously scribbling here, trying not to lose this train of thought … I think there are structures, there are physical structures – talk about land use – driving transportation and not the other way around. I’ve seen some evidence that if you get a good transportation system in, for example the rapid transit down on the Coast, you can shape some land use around stations. So, it’s possible it might work both ways. We can debate that one. Let’s just say the jury’s out, at least in my mind.
There’s cultural structures in place. Now, if we were in Europe, where they’ve had two world wars, things were razed down to the ground, they’ve been able to start from scratch and rebuild their communities. We haven’t had that luxury – luxury, is that the right word? – crisis, plague. So we have 100-plus years of auto dominance as a tradition and that’s where we are now, in a physical structure that’s locked us in and I actually think, based on recent surveys and things we’ve been hearing, the majority of people out there would love to change.
They’re locked into a lifestyle, they work here, they live there and the only way to get from here to there is a car. We don’t have the political wherewithal or the funding to build both roads and fund more buses. We have choices now. We’re at the point where we can’t afford supply side response. We’ve got to pick a demand-side and choose wisely. And we don’t have much time before we may not even have those choices. So we’ve got structures and that will take political will. And how do we get people, the average person, to decide to tell their politician it’s time for some radical change quick, before it’s too late?
REDD: So, with all of this, I just want to get towards the really juicy stuff (much snickering) oh, believe me, it’s all juicy, but, this is the part where we imagine the future of the valley. And I’m talking 25, 100 years out. I mean, maybe even only 10 years out, but imagining it, and what stands out about it. What are the challenges, what are the crises, what are maybe some of the new innovations? What stands out when you look down the road?
HAUBRICH: We can start with a very good software exercise, this Okanagan Quest, developed by the Okanagan Partnership, which gives us a possibility to look in the future and there are all kinds of things you can change. You can change density, you can change the number of people in the Okanagan and then you can see in 2020, in 2040 how the Okanagan looks and I think that’s a fantastic tool also to give to politicians and to people to make those choices.
If you decide, for example, I don’t want high density, then very easily you can see where the bad thing is happening and I don’t think … this tool is not yet introduced well enough that people are using it. I want to make a point, we should look at it.
GREENWELL: Our political leadership needs to understand – Peter and I are both on the board of the Okanagan Partnership and we were involved with that project. It’s a fantastic tool if they use it, if they choose to learn how to use it. And they’re kind of sloughing it off to the planning people and saying, here, you guys learn how to do that. But really, it’s the decision-makers who should be using that and should be understanding the impacts of the current development regime.
Twenty-five years, it’s amazing what could happen in 25 years, but our current model is definitely not sustainable, the thirst for land, the desire for water and the competing interests for water. It’s going to come to a crisis point much, much sooner than 25 years.
Globally, with climate change, Canada, as a nation is not setting a very good example. Parts of Canada are doing better than others, certainly. We’re already looking at answers being, well, we’ll just genetically modify the crops and the trees and everything to accept more heat. So we’ll just tweak everything. Is that really the answer? I know the elders I work with, the First Nations are horrified by that notion, that you would genetically alter the planet, that man would alter the planet in order to sustain themselves.
STOCKDALE: In 1970 I was lucky enough to be down at the University of California and I had some spare time, so I did a course on futurology. What they did was, they invited all the senior bureaucrats of California to come and talk to us over a lunch, so that the head of hydrology, the head of forests, the head of housing, roads, etc. came and talked to us.
What I was amazed at is how accurate they were, because living til 30 years later, to 2000, you could match up, they’d pretty well got it all right. One of the basics, just the population demography projections, it was about, I think, two and a half billion in 1970 and the projection was six billion. Well, they were within 100,000. Sorry, maybe I’ve got a million in there – but very close indeed. So I think we can do it.
What I did was I went to the computer and Googled the population Okanagan, you’ve probably done that already, and what they came up with was, our population should, in 25 years in the Okanagan, reach 100,000 more. So it’ll go from about 400,000 to about half-a-million.
That means, roughly, 50,000 more vehicles. Well, if you give a vehicle five yards, that’ll be bumper-to-bumper from Kelowna to Enderby and back. Okay, so there’s a problem.
Then you’ve got 40,000 new homes. If they’re all 15,000 square feet, we’re not going to have an awful lot of land. So new roads, new hospitals, new schools etc. Say goodbye to farmland. There’s so many things going to happen. So obviously that’s what looks as though it’s coming and beyond that, like Robbie Burns said, “I guess and fear.”
MURPHY: I’d like to comment. You asked us to imagine what it would look like 25 years from now. We don’t really have to in terms of demography of aging here, because we are the oldest community in Canada right here in Kelowna and we hold three of the six top spots for smaller centres. We are already at what Canada will be at in 25 years, so we are the bellwether of Canada’s aging right here and now.
And there are a number of social sustainability issues around aging including things like volunteerism, housing, social supports, care giving…. A very interesting example is that one in four Canadians is now working more than 60 hours a week. So there’s a serious question about after the boomers retire whether they will actually be interested in helping to volunteer for anything. And, as you know, they’re the people who support the kids’ sports leagues and the health care system, they have their finger in the dyke of many things and unless we really get a hold of some of these serious issues of sustainability, I think we’re seriously at risk.
On the other hand, we have the opportunity already to model for the rest of Canada what real innovation looks like, and I think we’re capable of it.
HEATHER LARRATT: One of the things that I thought that I might bring to your attention is, as water suppliers in the valley, we’ve been asked to consider that even within 25 years we’ll be facing warmer, wetter winters but that we would also be drawing on stored water for an additional four weeks per summer. So that means that water suppliers have to start developing upland storage in order to even meet what we currently require for water. So if you add into that mix the chaos of climate and weather patterns, then it doesn’t take too many 2003s, 2004s back to back and we’re in trouble right now.
A number of my irrigation districts, when we went into 2004 – I don’t know if you remember, but it began to rain in August – but prior to that it was actually drier than 2003. We went into 2004 in a deficit and there were a number of my irrigation districts that were getting really close to sucking mud – and that, of course, wasn’t broadcast, because it can create all kinds of behaviours that we didn’t want, like people buying more bottled water and stuff like that.
But it’s a variable. Because it’s climate driven, our water resources, there isn’t a set place where we can go, okay, this is how far we can grow and no more. Because that boundary keeps moving, it’s plastic.
JANMAAT: I think that kind of issue is one that we actually have a bit of a handle on in the sense that we can anticipate that one. I think that there’s a couple of others that only some people are starting to get a hint of.
Climate change – some of the recent projections for sea level rise. A couple of months ago, they were talking 40 centimetres, but some of the recent changes have been saying that things are happening a lot faster than we thought and we could be talking five metres by the end of the century. Now, if that’s what’s happening, there’s going to be a lot of low-lying places in the world where people can’t live any more and we’re then going to be facing millions, tens, hundreds of millions of climate refugees around the world. Where are they going to go?
And we’re projecting population growth in this valley based on historic trends that were driven largely by immigration from elsewhere in Canada. You add to this mass immigration from other parts of the world and we have more population issues to deal with. So that one could surprise us.
Another one on the climate change issues and water issues – we’re connected to the rest of the world through agricultural markets. If the bread basket of the United States, which depends on the Ogallala aquifer, gets drier and the aquifer gets drawn down and crop yields go down there, that’s going to drive up prices. That’s going to impact on this valley and agriculture in this valley, which will add even more demand to water if we try to grow more food here as well as accommodating all these people.
So we could be in for some surprises and some of them are nastier than we’re thinking about. We might innovate around them, I hope we do, but some of the pressures, I think, we’re just starting to realize. The future’s surprising.
REDD: I’m wondering, Gary, we’re talking about water pressure, you being a consultant to the wine industry, I wonder what your perspective is?
STRACHAN: Viticulture, of course, is very efficient in its use of water. But currently the wine industry is extremely prosperous and so a great many farms that are being bought out for vineyards are being contoured, their slope is being changed to avoid frost pockets and to optimize sun exposure, that sort of stuff. I see a lot of this land as being essentially put into a reserve for the day in which we will require more extensive agriculture. We come under a lot of criticism now that wine is a luxury item, but I think that it’s safeguarding agricultural land for the future.
At the moment, the value of land for viticulture is as great as that for residential housing, they can compete on an even level, and I have very strong feelings about maintaining the Agricultural Land Reserve.
Summerland is under enormous pressure and I look at the proposals that are there and I think, why would these people make proposals knowing that in 25 years they’re going to be out of water and there will be lots of lawsuits. And the only thing I can think of is that the people who are proposing it have a very short-term view. They will come in, get their permission, do their subdivision and get out with their profits and leave the lawsuits to the people who come later. Someone hasn’t done their due diligence, or perhaps they have, and said, well it works for me.
And somehow we have to provide incentives to get past that point so that the things that are going to happen to the people later on are also taken into consideration. It’s actually been documented through the date at which the water stops going over the spillways in the Okanagan. We have moved three weeks earlier into the year and so, even without anything else, we’ve extended our irrigation period by that amount. And it’s just going to get stronger and stronger.
I found it interesting that that three-week period is consistent with the data from Europe as well. Northern Europe has had exactly the same figure and that’s records starting about 1950 or something like that.
CHEN: I just want to continue on with what Gary is saying, is that we have finite agricultural land. We are only feeding 48 per cent of British Columbians with our own land right now and the minute “peak oil” strikes, I mean, we are going to value that land. So these are finite resources.
Yes, innovation, technology is wonderful human venture and it’s going to save our bacon, but we can’t technologize our way out of certain realities, which is our planet Earth. I think the one point – I remember Julie Payette, who is one of our first Canadian women astronauts, when she was in the shuttle, said something really poignant. She was interviewed and she said, what did you think about when you looked down on our planet Earth? She said something (and I’m paraphrasing), she said, I look around my space shuttle and there’d be so many redundant systems protecting seven human lives but I look down on our fragile Earth, there’s no redundant system.
We continually argue whether we have global warming, whether we have enough water. Just assume we’re not going to have enough water and start doing something now. And I think you can.
I remember travelling in Africa for a year on very little water, and it was fine. But because it’s so easy for us to turn the tap on. And I don’t think they’re huge sacrifices in terms of less consumption. It’s not a matter of choice – exactly what Geoff is saying and Gail is saying – I think we should go the other direction and look at the hidden subsidies for, like sprawl that we’re all paying for.
Keep our Agricultural Land Reserve. It also helps our urban containment boundary. It makes us more rigorous in designing compact communities. Imagine. I live in Penticton. I thank my lucky stars I live there because we’ve been contained by two lakes, we have the ALR, we have First Nations lands (that haven’t yet quite – hopefully will go into a more positive development direction). Because, if we didn’t have that, I think that we’d be sprawling all over the hillside by now. Thank goodness there is that constraint there until we all wake up and realize this is something precious, something unique to work towards, to give us unique solutions. It’s not a constraint, it’s an opportunity.
GREENWELL: Also, the world is moving to a capitalist model. Go back a hundred years, you could argue a lot of the world operated on a socialist model, which was sharing and there was enough as long as everyone shared. And enough was enough.
Now, more and more countries in the world (the collapse of the eastern block), more and more countries in the world are looking at the American model, for one, and say, hey, that looks great. We want that, we want a nice car, we want this, we want that. How do I get that?
Well, we all consume, we all strive for material gain, and, as Peter pointed out earlier, our quality of life is an interesting conundrum. You can either have quality of life through consumption or you can have quality of life through appreciation. I think we’re moving far too much on the planet to the consumptive model, which I think’s hugely dangerous. There’s no checks and boundaries. We’re just all consuming. We all want everything now.
STOCKDALE: One of the things, just to try and be a bit more upbeat, because obviously we’re really worried about water, but I talked to a young woman in Penticton, Ministry of the Environment, yesterday or the day before, and she’s been investigating the aquifers in this area, which take water basically from the Shuswap system into the Okanagan Lake system – and apparently found three fairly good. (You’d know more about this Heather, about these aquifers). That might give us some breathing space.
The sense I get in the room is everybody’s really aware of how acute the problem is and how quickly we should be moving on it, so maybe the last thing that we should tell the politicians is that’s there’s some aquifers to blow.
TEMPLE: There’s people in the room that know far better than I about the demands on water, the demand on water from agriculture, and we talk about Green Building Code – the building code is about to change in April of this year and low-flow fixtures are going to be mandatory – and that’s all excellent. But it’s interesting that we’re moving toward innovative things and we’re going to start regulating them when my understanding is, at least, that the consumption of water in this valley is – the agricultural demand vastly outweighs the demand of the urban community and I hope that, I don’t know, I hope that we are moving toward very, very innovative technologies in using less and less and less water in our home, but I hope that – you were saying that viticulture is extremely efficient, homes notwithstanding, I mean irrigation outside on the lawns, to me that’s just silly. But, we need to be looking at all ways of conserving water, over and above what we actually use in our house.
LARRATT: I’d like to speak to that. When you compare the amount of water that’s used in the winter, which is your straight domestic, to the amount of water that’s used in the Okanagan in the summer, it’s 10 per cent is your winter base flow, that’s you’re domestic internal use of water, 90 per cent is your increase when you go into the summer and most of that (a good chunk is agricultural) most of that is going on the lawn – that institution that we simply must move past.
Agriculture has also been under pressure to become more conservative with their water. So, for example, a number of irrigation districts go in and do soil monitoring for a farmer and say, okay, this is exactly, precisely how much water you need to use and you’re going to get this rate for that much water. You go over that and the rates really start to jump.
Unfortunately, one of the best ways to get people to conserve water is to meter them. So that you have an escalating scale. But I’m happy to say, (a lot of this we can sound pretty negative to another audience) but, for example, the Lakeview Irrigation District, which supplies about 20,000 people on the west side of the lake, they’re peak year for consumption of water was 1998. They have increased in size by about 30 per cent but their demand has stayed level, give or take a few cubic metres. And that is attributable to people voluntarily, because they’re not metered yet, voluntarily using less water and becoming more aware that there is something else that you can do with your yard besides plant emerald cedars and a green lawn.
REDD: Five minute break.
(Comments about not drinking bottled water. Much chatter among participants.)
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PART 3 – DEVELOPMENT/GROWTH
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LUKE REDD: Okay, everybody. This is great to see all the side discussions going on here. I’ve been overhearing some of the side discussions and there’s some neat ideas and banter going on. I just wanted to start, before we start looking into the development and growth issues, I just wanted to give Mary Ann an opportunity to talk about the aging population….
MARY ANN MURPHY: Thanks. Well, I just commented that when we were talking about our ideal community, I would have liked to have said, a community that understands and respects diversity and I think that will be one of the great changes that we’ll see here in 25 years, a really different visible population.
We know that to offset the declining fertility rates that Gordon was talking about, that two-thirds of this gap will be made up with international immigration. And so we’ve already seen Mexican labourers that have been brought into Kelowna, people from other countries that are living in hotel rooms to offset current labour shortages, and this will only increase and I think we all know that this is a community that’s not used to diversity in many ways. And we have a lot of lengths to go before we really are a community that respects difference. So that was just an initial comment.
And then, with respect to aging, 25 years from now, I see a population that is, of course, older and larger than we have it today. And we know that at least a pocket of older people will live well beyond age 70, 80, 90 even 100. We know that the number of centenarians in Canada will triple in the next 20 years or so, and so I hope to see a community with very active, vibrant seniors, many over 100 – and the most interesting thing about them is that if they live to a good old age, they are also exceptionally healthy.
So in terms of sustainability, we have to look at new health systems that are focused on prevention and early intervention and most importantly, all the new brain research, all the new genetic research, is pointing to the importance of simple exercise, including walking, as the real key to a very healthy aging because about 70 per cent of it is lifestyle. And later on I hope we get to talk more about social sustainability and I have a bit of a vision I’d like to share about some of the social questions around sustainability.
REDD: Good. Well, let’s get right to the development and growth issues. You can see by the agenda, the questioning, the line of questioning here that I’ve put together might be more than we can handle here tonight, but I just wanted to ask, is there one question out of these – and we’ll read it, I won’t choose it – that you find most intriguing to talk about? If not, I will choose. (Laughter.)
GEOFF GREENWELL: Well the concept of limiting or ceasing population growth is quite interesting I think. I mean, all of the questions deserve answers, but I would predict that most of the conversation might end up around that – how you would contemplate that.
I’ve lived in a couple of very large cities in the world, New York, London and a couple of others, and the footprint here is big enough to house three million, easily. And that’s what you would have if you were in London or New York. The size of the footprint – Kelowna out to Lake Country and back – you’d have three million people. So can you imagine three million people? You’d have to go up. You sure as heck aren’t going up the hillsides and building single-family dwellings. I mean, it would be all high rises. But, you look at cities like Taipei, 11, 12 million in an area smaller than the footprint of what we’d define as Kelowna.
REDD: It’s interesting with this footprint because it kind of goes into the first question, which is hillside development and with so much of our flat land necessarily dedicated to agriculture and actually more agriculture having to move up to the hillsides, and development, new housing and whatnot, what impact – what’s your opinion of the impact of the necessary increased building on the hillsides will bring, because of our population growth?
ISABEL CHEN: I don’t think we’ve run out of land. Have you seen how many empty parking lots there are? I think that’s the shift we have to think about. I don’t think – I mean we’ll run out of hillsides. I think we haven’t developed the land that we have and retrofitting it in a way that will allow us to keep our vistas of the hillsides, the quality, the beauty – all those wonderful things that people come and live here.
We have, actually, a lot of access to natural areas that, if we don’t destroy it, allows us to densify and retrofit. And there’s a lot of communities in the States already, retrofitting strip malls, commercial malls, looking at infilling. But to get it beyond just rhetoric, we need to really have incentives in place to make sure that development in the existing land base we have gets densified in a way that has quality and will attract people to live here.
People have been wanting to move away from some of the urbanized areas because it’s not attractive, but if you give them a beautiful, attractive environment that allows people to age in place, they’ll walk, healthy, they will want to live there.
GAIL TEMPLE: I would love to say something to that. It’s that, but it’s also that – I mean, redevelopment, you’re so right. The footprint of this community – we could have so many thousands of people living here and simply by just redeveloping the land that we already have sacrificed, that already has buildings on it.
But it’s not just about … one of the biggest things in my job – I stand in front of council and I lobby for developments all the time and one of the most difficult things is – we’re talking about redevelopment, we’re talking about infill and changing neighbourhoods that actually already exist. And if we’re going to go to that hundred year vision, these communities that exist today – that are all these single family houses or whatever on the flats – they’re going to have to go through a period of transition and they’re going to have to change.
One of the hardest things that we do is lobby for higher density infill development, because people stand in that gallery and they go on and on about how we are now destroying their neighbourhood. But it has to actually change. So that’s really tough.
And that speaks to what I think is one of the biggest threats to achieving sustainability in this valley or anywhere else. It’s that we have a three-year political cycle. We have these people who have this three-year imperative. They have this incredibly short vision because even if they tried, often times, to vote for the 100-year vision, they’re just going to get thrown out by all these people who don’t like what they’ve been doing.
We have to have massive education of people about what our community needs to look like in terms of density and all the rest of it so that we can accept change. And I think that’ll be an interesting exercise for all of us to go through.
GORD LOVEGROVE: I just want to build on that because I 100 per cent agree and I think, just as Penticton uses the lakes as boundaries, I think we should consider the hillsides as boundaries and not have growth grow up them.
As an engineer, infrastructure costs go right through the roof when you talk about sprawl. I think redevelopment’s the key and you don’t have to build towers, some people do, towers are good. Other people not so high – four storeys – I mean, it depends on where you go and what culture you’re in. You can achieve density and the density you want and the look and the aesthetics you want in several different forms. I’m not trying to dictate one way or the other. I’m just saying, you’re absolutely right, the average density in this valley is rural residential! It’s horrible. It’s very inefficient and we’re spread out enough already without going up the hills. How do you expect people to be serviced by transit, sewer, water if we keep going.
Let’s face it, in 10 years we’re going to face a crisis. The cost of fuel is going to be at least double because we are passing the peak, some people think that we’ve already passed it. Natural gas is peaking in terms of peak discoveries and as demand in this consumptive society keeps going, it’s going to go through the roof once your supply starts slacking off and your demand keeps growing. That gap drives the price up through the roof.
At that point we’ve got roughly 10 years to go if we listen to current experts. We have a crisis looming. So the best thing we can do now is educate ourselves, get it out there – just like we’re doing here – educate our leaders, educate the residents – and then, when that crisis hits, (as the Chinese characters of the word crisis – Peter knows what I’m about to say – the word for crisis in Chinese is made up of two characters, one is danger, the other is opportunity) – so at that point we have a choice. If we’ve educated ourselves, we can make a good choice. If we haven’t, we’re in danger of chaos and breakdown in society, our social systems, addictions, euthanasia – we’re going to you-know-what in a handbasket. But if we’ve educated ourselves and prepared ourselves …
Because we’re up against it structurally, as I said earlier, change is difficult. It’s difficult, especially as you grow older as a society. So the only way to get over that is a crisis of the mind or a real crisis, which we will face. And if we’re educated and we’re ready, then we jump. That’s when people step forward, the leaders say we’ve got this, this and this to do and then we can get into that redevelopment, very efficient systems.
And just as Mary Ann said she wants to talk a little bit about social sustainability, I think Peter and I want to jump on the band wagon a little bit about sustainable transportation for the valley – setting a long-term vision.
PETER STOCKDALE: I think there’s a moral side of this too. In the Guardian this week they wrote an article and said something like there are something like 800 million drivers in this world, and there are two billion people on the verge of starvation. And with Bush’s decision to push biofuels, 20 per cent of the American corn now goes to produce fuel and he’s saying that’s got to be stepped up. But the effect of that on the world has been that the cost of corn has nearly doubled, so of course it’s going to affect more.
So what he’s doing, he’s saying that we North American drivers can drive even if we destabilize the world. Well he’s wrong. He’s lost control of the Middle East. Right? If he goes the way he’s going with how he converts things to make biofuels, he’s going to lose an awful lot more of Latin America, Africa. Okay? So there is a moral side to it too. I mean, okay, so we’ve got to get a kick in the butt to change, but at least some of us should say well, it’s incumbent on me to change anyway.
JOHN JANMAAT: (To Gail –) I really appreciate your comment about standing in front of council and arguing for things and having neighbours come up against. I came to this thinking one of the issues is that there’s this disconnect between the incentives for land owners and for planners and that land owners are a big problem, because they’re opposing plans.
Because if you’re a speculator, you buy some property, you want to develop it, the planners come up with this nice plan, which your land is on the outside of – you’re going to fight against it. And I think there is some of that. But I think what you say is also really great because it’s the residents who are already there, too, who don’t want it to change.
TEMPLE: Absolutely.
JANMAAT: And so I really appreciate that comment.
TEMPLE: And we fought three years to go for a piece of property, long and hard, and we used the smart growth argument and showed that we were putting amenities that people – you know, people who were driving – one guy stood up at a public hearing and he said, “I drive eight kilometres, yes I do, to go get a DVD and eight kilometres home and it is my right to do so.”
And I’m thinking, wow! – It might be your right, but that is just so utterly irresponsible. But the hard thing was, 200 people came out to that gallery and held up placards and council caved. And maybe now, five years later, council wouldn’t cave. But I’m telling you, it’s easier to go get a zoning on a piece of hillside because no one’s going to come out and fight you, because you’re not affecting anybody. So infill, as much as we all say it’s great, it’s really difficult and we need to educate people that that’s okay. (To John – Sorry.)
JANMAAT: I haven’t gotten ready to shut up yet. So, that’s one thing, I really appreciate that. Now my train of thought has been slightly derailed.
The hillside, I think if we’re going to look at hillside development, we have to look at it more in a context of hillside communities as opposed to hillside subdivisions (in background, TEMPLE: – yes … suburbs). And think of those communities in the context of liveability, not just driving your car up some hillside, because you’re car can go up the hill pretty good, but if you’re going to be biking or walking, the hill is a problem.
So we’ve got to design with the contours in mind for alternative modes of transportation and similarly, with the hillside communities – dense cores and services and such sort of stuff on the hillside too so people don’t have to be driving up and down the hillside to get seven kilometres for their DVD etc. If we’re going to do it on the hillside, we’ve got to take those sorts of things into account.
The other thing, I was at a conference recently where one of the things that was brought up was the fact that in Canada, there is almost no link between funding for municipalities and for cities and any goals such as achieving sustainability and measures of some kind.
The US under the EPA, the EPA has authority to withhold federal funding to states and cities if they do not meet air quality standards. And that has been used to hammer down on Atlanta. Atlanta just sprawled out like crazy, but then they started getting ozone problems and when they didn’t do anything about it the EPA said, you’re going to be hit, and they withheld highway funding.
We have nothing like that in Canada. So the provincial government doesn’t tie its funding for cities to things like walkability or some other such goals, which it could do, and I think we have to examine those kind of tools too. It’s not just everything at the city level. There are tools that could be implemented at the provincial level that would then provide a stimulus and add extra encouragement for cities to move in the direction that we’re talking about.
REDD: We have Isabel and then I’ll bring you back.
CHEN: I just want to talk a little bit about the – there’s wonderful public hearings that I’ve been on both sides of – and what I see is, and this is a criticism of municipalities, they actually put developers sometimes in the middle.
I think it’s the role of the municipalities to really engage citizens early on, have a neighbourhood context plan within which your development fits, and not shove it off to the developer and create this angst. There will always be people who don’t want change, but I think, and we’ve been involved with Smart Growth, Smart Growth on the ground, involving all the stakeholders early on. It’s amazing how, if you do that, in a genuine way, even the people don’t agree, they’ll say, I’ve had my say.
I have been on the other side and seen lip service paid to citizen engagement where neighbourhoods are angry. So there isn’t, I think, they need to be brought along in a very inclusive way early on and it cannot all be dumped on the developer to do that. The municipalities have to be leaderful in setting that environment of dialogue and discussion early on, and show examples. So that they’re not islands of developments, right….
TEMPLE: Especially when we’re developing using land zoning maps (IC – exactly) that were done before this century. So, how forward thinking are we when we’re still trying to conform to that map when – and people say, the OCP is sacrosanct, you need to work with that – well, what if it’s completely and utterly outdated and it’s not sustainable at all – then what? Yeah, you need leadership. The municipality needs to really lead.
CHEN: And like (Okanagan) Quest, the visible – now we have the technology to show people what it looks like and people love tangible. As an architect – people love models, they love to see. So I think, and in Vancouver I know that it is – the planning department, they have tools to show the three-dimensional qualities of space. I think we need to utilize those tools early on and look at development within neighbourhoods, not just islands of rezonings, and I think you need an entire neighbourhood to kind of buy in.
GREENWELL: I don’t think Kelowna has neighbourhoods. I think what’s happened is, with consumerism comes inverse consumerism. People want everything, but then they want to know, but where can I get it even cheaper. I want all this but I also want it as cheap as I can possibly get it.
So we’re about to see a 220,000 square foot Wal-Mart be built on Westbank First Nation Lands – so everybody’s going to drive over there. We’re all driving over there. Gone are the days …. When I grew up in England, the neighbourhood was somewhere where you could walk to buy anything you needed. You didn’t drive anywhere. I didn’t have a car when I was a kid. My parents didn’t drive. You didn’t need to drive. You walked to the store and you walked back and if you needed something big, they’d deliver it for you. Not everybody needed a pick-up truck because they would bring it to you. But now you go to buy things at most stores, people don’t even want to deliver it any more, “no, no, you have to take it away.”
So we’re not developing neighbourhoods, we’re making people … our landscape here is defined by the automobile. Our urban planning is defined by the automobile. We have everything – you go to the mall – where you can park a thousand cars. Is there any transit to the mall, no. So I think our landscape in Kelowna is completely defined by the automobile.
TEMPLE: But we are kind of challenged, too, by the ALR land that is on the flats. But we have to preserve that, which means we really need to be providing complete neighbourhoods, especially so here.
GREENWELL: And nothing good comes out of hillside development, as Gord pointed out. Costs go up, there’ll be slope destabilization problems, because of all the trees you’re going to remove, which takes more engineering, which costs more money, and you’re going to have the run-off down, which is going to pollute the water. So, there’s nothing good coming out of hillside development.
REDD: We’ll go to Peter and then Mary Ann.
STOCKDALE: If God had to recreate the world and we started Genesis again, surely on the first day he would create the car. (Big laugh) Because everything would follow, and that’s what’s happening now.
MURPHY: I just wanted to comment about the steep terrain communities. We just finished a big housing study in Peachland, and those hillside homes are not sustainable for anybody who’s getting older. They have three or four storeys, very steep driveway, everybody’s falling, breaking knees, hips – and they all want to relocate to flat level housing, which isn’t available. So, if we keep building hillside housing for people that are buying in their 50s and 60s, that is definitely not sustainable.
I also had a question for everyone about the mitigating factors of growth. We’re presuming unbridled growth in the Okanagan, but personally, I’m beginning to wonder. On the one hand I see people being very disenchanted with Vancouver, tired of the safety issues, the gangs, the driving and the housing prices – who very likely see Kelowna as not a bad place to relocate.
And then on the other side, in these hillside houses that we’ve been investigating, so many of the owners are from Calgary and Edmonton, you’d be astonished. So I realize that we’re actually highly dependent on the oil industry as well. If the oil industry’s in trouble … who owns 80 per cent of the vacation properties here is probably Albertans. And so I just wondered if everyone here had a comment about this and also whether our housing prices are already at a limit that we think might limit growth. Have we reached the ceiling yet?
GARY STRACHAN: I can go back to Summerland on this one because this is certainly becoming a problem for us. In the last census, it showed that Summerland was only advancing at about one, one-and-a-half per cent growth rate, and yet we’ve had record numbers of houses being built and, of course, we’re faced now with all the big new mansions of our non-resident owners.
And we’re having serious problems with our council. We attempted, through a citizen’s association, to get some people in there who were sensitive to the growth rate and we did get half the council. We now have a split council and the mayor casts the deciding ballot and so we generally go four-to-three whenever we try to get something moved through that will be sensitive to the community.
So, this political question is a really tough one because politicians, their view is of the next election, it’s not of the development of the community a number of years down the road. It’s a very difficult system to work with to get sustainability within a community because the leaders of it have a short-term view of what they have to accomplish.
REDD: Anybody else want to answer ….
LOVEGROVE: You ask a great question and each of us has been talking to it indirectly, perhaps, since the start of this. Peak oil is going to hit and I’ve already said, I think it’s 10 years. The average person’ll be thinking twice about owning a car let alone buying gas … and the 100-year vision, we’ll probably be taking down the Wal-Mart and using it for building materials – reusing the material.
Because, you know what, we’re going to be on buses and we’re going to be forced to walk or bike or use solar cells on whatever vehicles still remain. And our vision then is, we’re going to have electric rail up and down this valley to connect to the States to move those goods. Trucks, nope. They’re going to be either battery, solar-charged, short-run to and from the dock and the railway. We’re not going to have long hauls by trucks any more. It’s going to be rail, electric rail.
That fuel that is left is going to be strategic – military – government, defence, emergencies. The common person – I wouldn’t be surprised if SUVs are outlawed. They may not be outlawed; certainly it’ll be a choice whether you own one and use it as a paperweight. But you won’t be able to afford to run it unless it’s got solar cells on the roof. There aren’t going to be long private trips. So fuel is a limiting factor.
I think we’ve already talked about water. Conservation, efficiency, technology will allow us to expand somewhat, I suspect, but that’s got to be the limiting factor in this valley as far as I’m aware.
Food, we’re going to go to green roofs. A lot of our buildings are going to have their own gardens on the balconies on the roofs. And perhaps the air quality is going to clean itself up when we quit using gas as much and we stay more locally. Maybe that’s the one good news in all of this, it’ll start cleaning itself up, unless we start going to wood.
Because the pine beetle we haven’t even brought up. Geoff, you and I were talking about this before we started. There’s going to be a lot of dead pine trees around here. Maybe that’s going to be an alternative fuel source. And we haven’t even talked about the fact that drought, whatever water there is is going to reduce that, so I think there are limits to growth in this valley, and one of the things we’ve got to do and maybe John, you can speak to this since you’ve talked to Dr. Cohan, is there a growth rate or a population cap based on water supply? Do you know?
JANMAAT: I don’t know. In my own thoughts on that, much in line with what you were saying, Gail, earlier, it’s a matter of how we live. For myself, I have actually some ethical issues with the limiting growth in the valley itself, for the very reason of these climate refugees I talked about. People are going to need to go somewhere. And things like water, transportation ability – we have to deal with those issues in terms of how we’re going to live in this valley. But closing the border and saying, we like it the way it is, and the fact that Fiji has been flooded, too bad, you’ve got to go somewhere else, I’ve got a problem with that.
TEMPLE: And housing prices would be – I mean, they would go sky high. And the middle-income people would not be able to afford to live here and the young people would have to leave and it would become an aging society and I actually think that I agree that it’s how we live. If we really have such a huge discrepancy between water usage in the winter and the summer, look at how many single-family neighbourhoods are driving that deal. We just have to learn to live differently. And again, I think we can become, when you talk about how big our footprint is and how inefficiently we all get around, we need a lot more people to make efficient systems successful. We really do.
PETER HAUBRICH: So maybe you have a fantastic opportunity in the Okanagan Valley to show how you can do it. I think that is the positive part of this, because we have, the Okanagan Partnership, for example, brought the valley a little bit closer to each other. Now, we identify all the problems and everybody agrees. If we talk about high-density, everybody says yeah, yeah, yeah, we should do it. So maybe now is the time for action and we have to find out what are the limiting factors, what is really the problem and then maybe we, as an Okanagan Valley, can show to the world or to Canada how you can do it. I would very much support that.
STOCKDALE: One of the things that worries me is that our politicians seem to be going forwards and backwards at the same time. So what they do, for example, is Campbell talks green – and he’s actually done some pretty good talking in the last few days – but at the same time, CBC said, within the last two months, that he’d given $2 million to Kamloops to lengthen the runways. Now, plane travel is one of the worst things, if you read George Monbiot’s Heat, the worst things we can do. Now, that $2 million, he could have actually put an awful lot of money towards a mass transit system from Kamloops to Salmon Arm to Osoyoos. Okay. But I bet you he doesn’t think of that. He’ll go on and lengthen the runway. So how do we persuade our politicians to not put the right leg forward and the left leg back, so they stay nowhere?
I think that’s important, can we get to them and say, look, you’re saying this but you’re going exactly the opposite way with how you’re spending your money this year.
And the second one, and this is more in the realms of fantasy, if you talk about 100 years – well the last two decades, three decades probably, we’ve been adding a billion each decade. So in a hundred years that’s another 10 billion and we’re on a base of six – so that’s 16 billion. So my projection, and I think for many demographers, is there’ll actually be about three billion because there will be massive die-offs and how do we cope with that?
Already we know that temperature rise over Darfur is four degrees, the highest in the world. Those are figures from bureaucrats in Victoria. And 200,000 people have been killed. Okay, it’s nothing to do with racism – oh we all say it, it’s a comfortable thing to blame them for. What it’s basically due to is our driving and the way we’re pushing the planet and then some people who are nomads have to try and pasture their cattle and other people who are agriculturalists have to grow food. Well, they can’t. There’s no water because the temperature’s too high, it’s evaporating too quickly, so it’s already happening everywhere.
And the last comment I’d like to make, John, this one would be to you, and that is I believe, I don’t know if the figures are still in this region, Isabel, but I understand that the population increase every year in China is 10 million and it’s about the same in India – or it was 15 years ago when I first read these figures. Now you think of how many 747s you’re going to have to fill up to get them over here to the Okanagan, John. It’s going to be tough, even if you bring them over in boats, standing room only.
Think they can handle 10 million? I mean, my feeling is that they can’t solve the problem by moving people. They have to solve the problems the same way as we have to solve them. We have to solve them here. Then maybe we could make room for a few of them. But I don’t see how we can possibly start looking after a billion every year.
JANMAAT: Even the density of Hong Kong, you’d still have trouble with that.
STOCKDALE: Especially getting them here.
JANMAAT: What I’m suggesting, at least personally, I think the idea of saying, no you can’t come, I have some ethical trouble with. Who, how they’re going to get here, I don’t know that. The number of people who migrate around the world is quite considerable. People move for economic opportunities, to escape persecution and they do. And I think there’s a moral responsibility to try to accept those who have no other choice, when we can.
GREENWELL: You look at housing and you look at the European model and you mentioned house prices, are they sustainable. They’re sustainable through amortization periods. In Europe now you can get a 100-year amortization on a mortgage. Our banks now have moved to 40 in Canada and they’re slowly looking at, maybe we can extend that. So, if you move to 100-year amortization you bring in a whole new group of people who now can afford an $800,000 house. They’ll just keep going up. That’s what’s happening in Europe. It’s very bad. It’s very good for the banks and with a lot of these mortgages you can’t even get one unless you have children because then you’re creating indentured servants, frankly, because they’re on the mortgage. Kind of a scary model.
MURPHY: I think a big issue here, though, is that the housing prices have now crowded out the young families that are needed to sustain a really vibrant community. And I love being the oldest community in Canada, but we need those young people to work, to learn and to teach and to be here. And they’re saying that housing prices are forcing them out.
And so what I see is, I’ve talked to a number of businesses recently that are now closing two nights a week. They can’t even get a young worker to come work for $15 an hour, which I find astonishing. So a futures question, which I’d like to throw out about that is, you may or may not know that BC has now moved to abolish age discrimination in the BC Human Rights Code, which effectively abolishes mandatory retirement here this fall. So, in light of that, I wonder if those age 65 here who are fully capable and would love to work can now be used to offset our regional labour shortages and skills gaps and if so …. Very few western countries have any older workers, even Japan is really the best example.
I’ve met lots of talented people here who would love to work but can’t find work. They say, as soon as you see the snow on the mountain, the employer doesn’t want to talk to you. And at the same time, you’ve got employers here who can’t get help. And I’m just wondering how you explain the gap there, and how do you connect the employers here who need help with some of these really accomplished over-65?
GREENWELL: Something I want to say. With housing we’ve moved to a notion that everyone needs to own a house – over the last 50 years. We don’t look at cooperative housing around here, hardly ever, and we have this notion that house ownership creates equity, which creates wealth. And it’s false wealth, as we all know, because real estate markets can crash and cause the opposite of wealth, right.
But we need to look at European models and other models where the purpose of a house is to provide shelter and to provide stability and provide comfort. It was never originally to provide equity. We’ve moved to this equity model now, which again is fuelled from capitalism to a large extent. People want somewhere to live where they know they can live long-term, it’s comfortable, they can decorate it and have a sense of ownership. But it doesn’t mean they have to gain profit from it, so cooperative housing. And the Okanagan Partnership is about to bite off a large affordable housing study and try and deal with it regionally, and I think the results of that will be very interesting.
REDD: What about Mary Ann’s question about, can people 65 and older, can they fill the labour shortage?
GREENWELL: Wal-Mart on the Westside’s going to love em. But I’m being facetious.
HAUBRICH: The observatory had a person who was 80 years old and it was impossible to tell him that he should not work any more and he was still doing scientific research. So it is possible, I think.
CHEN: Healthier, more active – absolutely.
GREENWELL: Well, if 30’s the new 20 then logically, 80’s the new 70, etc. right. So if you’re fit and able and mentally healthy, why shouldn’t you keep working?
STRACHAN: Several of us at this table, I’ll be 70 on my next birthday.
MURPHY: This is one of the most interesting social sustainability questions for the future. Our community here is growing largely because of in-migration of people who are retired, exceptionally well educated, very savvy in many ways, bringing lots of cash here, driving up house prices. But also, they’re tremendously able to contribute to society here and bring new ways of thinking, which I think is tremendously important for the future of Kelowna.
And we know very little about these newcomers. You won’t believe how happy they are to leave all their ties behind at age 60. Doesn’t bother them a bit. They’re leaving their children behind, their communities behind and they’re not the old retirees of the past, they’re here seeking adventure.
So the question we can’t answer is, when they arrive here, what do they bring with them in many ways, and how do they attach to a new community and what can we do as a community to reach out to them and capitalize on all the social capital that they bring with them, all the knowledge and tremendous backgrounds.
Look at Peter as one example, if you don’t mind my saying. You told me you were the head of Sony R&D in Europe. You’re a perfect example of somebody coming here with a tremendous amount of potential contribution to make. So how do we reach out to you as a new arrival in the community? And we don’t have any models for this.
HAUBRICH: I find a lot of those people, because we are looking for mentors, we are looking for investing in small companies and there’s a tremendous wealth in the valley of people who have tremendous knowledge and they are still a little bit hidden. The problem is to find them. But they are there and I meet them almost every week. A huge potential, and probably we are lucky in the Okanagan Valley because people want to come here, are successful in their career and then they, after three months, maybe golfing is not so interesting and they want to do something useful. So we are blessed with this opportunity.
HEATHER LARRATT: One of the questions that you asked us before the forum was, do you see reason for optimism about sustainability and I think you’ve both touched on it, Mary Ann and Peter, that my reason for having optimism is the wealth of knowledge that’s moving into the valley and being able to cross-pollinate the ideas, just like we are here. This is the type of forum where things actually do get accomplished besides just consuming oxygen. I’m confident that there are large issues ahead of the valley, but really, I think that it’s achievable when we all start cooperating with each other and sharing ideas back and forth. I think it is and that’s the resource that we absolutely must tap into.
TEMPLE: The other thing is that solutions come out of people having problems. So when we talk about capping growth, we can’t possibly imagine, or we shouldn’t, I hope, be thinking we’re going to be flushing the same toilets and doing everything the way we do now. We’re not going to be that consumptive. I certainly hope not. And so, as we add more people to this valley, we will find solutions then to a lot of the stuff we’re talking about, because we’ll have to.
JANMAAT: Do people moving here want to live in the communities that we’re talking about needing to build?
TEMPLE: That’s the snag, cause I’ll tell you, what’s really interesting is watching the people who come to public hearings, who fight the hardest – they’ve moved here, and I can’t remember who said it, but people are coming here because they maybe don’t want to live in Vancouver and they see Kelowna as this alternative and they come and, maybe it’s an overgeneralization, but it’s this attitude that I’ve come here because there’s this little, small-town feel or there’s whatever it is that they really, really like. And now, because they’re here, they want to freeze it in time. And they sometimes fight the hardest to preserve something and I’m not sure what they’re trying to preserve, because it’s certainly not sustainable. But I do find that interesting.
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PART 4 – LOOKING AHEAD
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LAURIE CARTER: I’d be interested to hear, and you’ve touched on it a couple of times, you’ve talked about the incredible resource that’s here from the aging population that’s moved here, I’m interested in hearing what you think the implications are of the absentee owners and the large increase in that – I can’t call it the population – the not-population.
GAIL TEMPLE: The shadow population is what it’s called.
GEOFF GREENWELL: They damage communities …. Lake Country is a satellite community for Vernon and Kelowna that suffers from that. Lake Country never gets much in the way of infrastructure because people drive to Vernon or Kelowna. So, for a long period of time it’s kind of stuck there. There’s still really valuable highway land that sits derelict because people can’t make businesses succeed and a lot of it, now an increasing amount, is because of absentee owners. There isn’t enough critical mass coming to the video store or coming to the grocery store because so many houses are being occupied by absentee owners. They pay property tax but beyond that they hardly contribute at all because they’re not around.
GORD LOVEGROVE: I just want to back up on Geoff’s point – if I heard you correctly, you said they damage communities because there isn’t critical mass. Just one more, and maybe, John, you can jump on this one, I don’t know if you’d agree, but absentee owners represent that inflow to a market on housing demand and where there is continued demand there will be continued increase in prices so they may be damaging our community in another way in the sense of preventing young families from getting into the housing market by driving prices up out of this world.
Now, looking at that from the other side, people already in the market, investors, including why they’re coming from Alberta to invest here, because they’ve seen what’s happened historically. It’s a great investment. And people in the house, that’s equity. So there’s another structure in place. What do we do – is that something we have to overcome?
Because density can happen in two different ways. John, I’m in no way saying I support a growth cap, I’m just saying there may be some natural and physical limitations to growth. That is still wide open to debate and we’ll see what happens. And other experts on water know more about that than I do. But, if I can just finish …. So the one way is more people coming into the valley – that’s growth – that’s one way to densify. The other way, and you mentioned this earlier, Gail, is redevelop what we’ve got and move people in closer together. And that’s why I made the comment, you might see Wal-Mart getting torn down to be rebuilt somewhere else or a new town centre in that compact, walkable community of the future. Maybe 100 years from now, mind you.
JOHN JANMAAT: One of the things that I wonder about is, with such a large proportion of absentee owners, these are luxuries in the sense that these are second homes for people.
GREENWELL: Sixth or seventh homes for some of them.
JANMAAT: Those are the things that are going to be let go if the economy is not doing well. You keep your primary home, but how sensitive is this housing market going to be to a turnaround in the market more broadly in Canada? So, if oil prices come down again, folks who are in Alberta who are not cashed out and able to retire and move here, are now holding two mortgages – one very expensive house in the Okanagan that they bought and now their salary’s half, which one are they going to let go?
TEMPLE: Maybe we now have a huge influx of affordable housing because they have to rent it in order to keep it. You know.
JANMAAT: It’s just that there may be a great sensitivity in the price of this housing market to economic forces outside the valley.
MARY ANN MURPHY: I got really worried last year when someone I know from Alberta told me that they were only drilling about 15 per cent of the wells that they did the year before and I just thought, we’re so vulnerable. But when I really thought about it, if you were to retire, where would you rather live, Calgary, that’s 40-below, or Kelowna, that’s a lot warmer? So I think in the long run, a lot of these people will move here. But in response to the huge issues that we have with lack of affordable rental housing and subsidized units for seniors, why don’t we open up the secondary suites in these vacant homes? Gail, you must know the occupancy rate, but isn’t it 1.2 or 1.5 persons for every home here?
TEMPLE: Yeah, the DCC (Development Cost Charges) rate is calculated on about 3.1 per household, so they’re very generous with that. But what actually is occupying the house is about 1.2, yeah. It’s really, really low.
GREENWELL: In the other parts of the world that are beautiful and desirable, I’m just thinking for example of the Lake District in England, I don’t know if everyone is familiar with the Lake District – William Wordsworth country, etc. – the whole fabric of the community was being destroyed by absentee owners, because all the businesses were going out of business. So the government looked at it and said, what we’re going to do is, we’re going to limit who can buy these houses, because otherwise the young people who live there won’t live there any more and the businesses will fail. So they put in place rules, regulations, policies – however you want to look at it – that determines who can buy certain houses and why – to keep the community together.
Otherwise, this is what’s happening. I can see that in Lake Country now. As I say, I hardly have any neighbours. I live in a neighbourhood of maybe, say 60 houses. I predict maybe 10 of them are actually people who live year round. It’s that high in some areas now. It’s unbelievable.
MURPHY: Is there any benefit? They pay taxes but aren’t here to mess up the traffic. Does anybody see an advantage in having all these absentee owners?
GREENWELL: Aside from the SUVs they typically drive, they make up for it in the time they’re here. And their cigarette boats that go in the lake etc., the noise pollution, so, without stereotyping.
TEMPLE: They’re not part of the economic engine, really, and they aren’t contributing to a sense of community. It’s a tough one.
GREENWELL: It’s just driving real estate up – which can come crashing down.
ISABEL CHEN: I have a lot of planner friends who say it’s difficult to plan a community when most of the community – a large part of the community – is actually not there. So it comes full circle to – I think, Geoff, you opened up with, what we want in a community is to be able to live with people eye-to-eye, respect and all of that. I wonder whether or not – I mean, Whistler certainly have the other model, which is – the housing is for people who work there and relatives and that’s how they were able to control that model – the housing stock. It has its own struggles and challenges, but…
I think England has an essential worker act – is that right – that if you’re an essential worker (unintelligible) …. So I think there needs to be, maybe an even higher level of discussion. I think the market is not going to provide an affordable housing solution.
Just for interest, if the Okanagan Partnership is doing an affordable housing study to check in with Smart Growth BC, we actually just compiled that and had a conference in Vancouver to bring people together to talk about this issue that is not just affecting Okanagan, but all of BC communities.
PETER STOCKDALE: I think everyone has basically been talking sociological or social matters and I’d like to sort of make some comments about biological things. So that people talked about growth and the willingness of society to change. But I think there are some things we should try really hard to conserve and not change and one of them, for example, would be the new national park.
But there’s a number of reasons you should (unintelligible) … and there’s things like biodiversity and all that sort of good sort of soporifics (unintelligible) ….
But one major thing is, with the climate change, always historically, animals, plants, insects, you name it, have moved up and down from the US to Canada with different glacial times and insects have been able to move up and down. Well now, as you know, near Oliver, there’s an area, it narrows down to about 200 yards across and everything is now going to be golf courses and vineyards and tarmac. And here … are we going to carry all these insects across? Why can’t we say, right, there are certain critical points, which are biologically necessary for the ecosystem and say, these we shouldn’t do anything about. We should really try hard on that particular thing.
So I think that’s something in the back we’ve got to keep our mind on too, because that means that what’s happened over 10 or 12 glaciations is stopped by our species and then what do we do? Do we just go into genetic modifications and make our own species? Or look at what we’ve done with everything we have done, biologically, how we screw it up. I think it’s probably better to let the big experiment that’s been going ever since life started, continue.
GREENWELL: (Unintelligible) … we’ve created a perfect storm, as it’s being said, for pine beetle now. We put fires out, which initially killed pine beetles, now we put fires out. We have global warming so we don’t have cold enough winters to kill them any more and we don’t do proper husbandry in the forests, so now we have a pine beetle epidemic. And I think we’re going to see more of those kinds of epidemics because of the way we’re dealing with the planet.
HEATHER LARRATT: I agree completely, and I also agree with you, Peter, that we need to be doing conservation and I’d like to put out to the group my pet project. And I know that we’re going to have some development up on hillsides because it’s private land, but what I would like to see us stop too, is the release of crown or public trust lands for private developments and for private interests.
And I suggest that we confine our cities by seeing the incredible value in conserving crown land. And when developers are developing, I would like to suggest that they conserve, not just parkland, and that could be the tot lot type thing or it could be a wildlife corridor, which is much too skinny in most cases. But I’d like to see three types of land conserved in a development — parkland, natural wildlife space and agricultural space — because that’s part of the reason people come here and will want to continue to come here.
And it’s important too, as we lose the forests and as things really change in the carbon cycling of British Columbia, it’s going to be a 60- to 80-year gap before those forests recover, if they recover. And we’re going to need to accommodate those balances and I’m very concerned with the current decision making in integrated land management bureau where they feel that you can apply for a lease on crown for just about anything you can imagine. And it seems to be open season, from the sale of cottage lots along reservoirs to developments on the scale of Crystal Mountain.
I really think we need to start putting the breaks on that and need to start pushing our politicians to say, those are all valuable things but there’s a greater good that needs conserving here and there’s a lot that we do not understand about what’s going on in these watersheds. They are providing the water for us and that’s not negotiable. And for example, where Victoria and Vancouver own their watersheds outright, you can’t even hike in it, if you walk into that, you’re going to get a helicopter ride out that you pay for, and Surrey just purchased for $3 million, whole sections of their watershed. We’re still busy giving ours away.
I think there’s going to be an extremely expensive buy-back in the future to regain control of our groundwater recharge zones and our drinking water watersheds. I think, as a forward-looking group, because we can do something, we should do something to watch out for these watersheds and for the larger picture of animal migrations.
REDD: Very good ideas. Unfortunately, we have to start wrapping this up, but before we do, I just want to maybe go around the table and just get everybody’s, you can keep it short and sweet, but – are you generally more hopeful than not – or are you generally more full of doom about all of this?
TEMPLE: I’m generally quite hopeful, actually, because I think that it’s amazing to me how this discussion has become so prevalent in the last few years. Ten, 12 years ago when I moved here, this wasn’t even up for discussion.
I actually think, even though we never touched on it, the Hwy 97 question that you asked us in here, I think that everybody that you could ask on the street probably will look at that and say, oh, that is just one of the worst things ever and it’s a mistake that we can never rectify and blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that that is one of the greatest opportunities this city has. It could be an urban river. It can be an unbelievable transportation corridor. It could have high-density and nodes all the way along it.
So that’s why I think I’m optimistic, because all of the stuff that seemingly looks like terrible problems, I don’t think they really are and the biggest, like I said before, the biggest challenge we have to any of this optimism is that we still make decisions so much based on three years instead of 100. But I’m still optimistic.
GARY STRACHAN: I was surprised that we had among us so much of a consensus. If this had been done 10 years ago, it probably wouldn’t have happened. There’s becoming such a widespread awareness of the changes that are occurring really rapidly in the Okanagan that probably another 10 years from now, if you’re still a denier, you’ll be probably equated with a Holocaust denier or something like that. (Laughter) Because this is actually going to have a bigger effect than the Holocaust. So, I think we have to just keep getting the message out and looking for more political support because we cannot move ahead until we get political support.
JANMAAT: I’m amazed, excited by the degree to which there seems to be a sense that people want to grab this issue and do something. I had that sense when … or, that was a part of the decision to move here … because it looked like there was an opportunity to do something. People in this valley are on water issues and now it looks like the whole development issue – people are ready to look at interesting ideas and move forward. Don’t know how yet. Don’t know how to grab the political momentum. Don’t know exactly what form we want to make it, but there is a desire to do something and that, to me, is very exciting and generates a lot of optimism.
LARRATT: Well, I’ve answered your question, did I have optimism for sustainability in the Okanagan and my written answer is, no. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Now try to prove myself wrong. But I must admit that I’ve been won over by this group because I’m in the water industry, so obviously I’m aware of the issues. But I’m delighted to discover how widespread the information has travelled and accurately. I’m really excited, because, if everyone works together, it’s a no-brainer that we can do it.
GREENWELL: I have grave concerns with our current political leadership in the region. There’s a lot of natural leaders in this room and we choose not to be in politics, probably because we are natural leaders and there’s an old saying which says, you should never vote for someone who wants to be elected. I would encourage everyone.
The Okanagan Partnership is a fantastic medium to continue this kind of dialogue. It has its AGM on Monday, December 3 (or 4) and it’s looking for new blood, it’s looking for new directors. It’s people like people in this room who need to be involved because we have a sort of level of senior bureaucrats in government below our politicians who’ve been there for a long time and are entrenched in that thinking and influence.
I see it in Lake Country, very, very prevalent there – influence the politicians and stall this kind of positive development that we’re talking about. That group needs to stop wagging the dog. And I’m going to run for – there’s a position coming up in Lake Country – I’m going to run for council because I want to put a foot in both camps. I think you have to step up and I’m of a perfect age to step up. I have enough grey hair and I have a funny accent (laughter), people assume you know what you’re talking about.
But I would encourage people, get involved with the Okanagan Partnership, it can do great things. It can provide leadership if people choose to engage.
MURPHY: I’m very optimistic about the shared values that I heard expressed around the table. I’m reminded of that old constitutional kitchen package table where you got your neighbours together and debated about the future of the country. I’d love to see what would happen in the Okanagan if people could debate about the future of their neighbourhoods and their communities.
But I don’t want to finish tonight without raising a concern about the 10 to 15 per cent of seniors who are low income and their issues around housing, in particular lack of affordable rental housing and long waits for subsidized units, unbelievably expensive assisted living and the vulnerability of those in mobile home parks. And in addition, I’d like to see us emulate what’s been done in countries like Norway around universal design to anticipate an aging-in-place society, not just green housing, but housing that’s adaptable over time to keep people at home. And really, to think about using our local high tech firms to develop new products to assist this.
I really can’t finish tonight without mentioning the social problem of homelessness because we haven’t had a chance to get there, but the homeless population in Kelowna has been of no interest to the federal government. They’ve been consumed with homelessness issues in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto and I can tell you that over the years we’ve made many applications to try and fund innovations here, to no avail. But I think this issue is high on the public’s agenda here and they seem finally willing to support something that looks at new ways of solving the problems, so I’m hopeful about that too.
STOCKDALE: I’d just like to say, it’s been a real pleasure and a real privilege to listen to you all and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself and if you’ll put up with it, I’ll give you my mantra. It’s the mantra of the four Ps: and the first P of the mantra is Persuasion; and the second P is, We the People; and the third P is Politicians; and the fourth P is the Planners. So, how the mantra works is: The People (that’s us) Persuade the Politicians. The Politicians Persuade the Planners (because they pay them) and then the Planners Persuade the People. Because you need to recycle.
(General background – nicely done.)
CHEN: I don’t think I can top that. It depends on what day whether I’m optimistic or not. I mean, like Gail, I’m generally an optimistic person and see – maybe it’s my Chinese background, the crisis being an opportunity. And, obviously sitting in this room, speaking to like-minded people, it’s very invigorating.
It’s when you step out the door that you’ve got to get that enthusiasm back again. I too, like Geoff, am concerned about the leadership, political leadership. I have more faith in individuals making change and the groundswell, hoping that that will incite the political leadership to make the changes. If they do, massive change can happen.
So it’s a bit of chicken and egg. I think you need to get the masses going to inspire the politician that maybe, the change should happen, that maybe more people should go into politics that have the vision for a sustainable future. Thank you very much, all of you, it’s been inspirational.
PETER HAUBRICH: Okay, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m an optimist. You should be an optimist and I don’t want to sound like a little bit of a broken record but I would like to also emphasize what Geoff was saying that the Okanagan Partnership is maybe a very good platform because what it does, it creates a vision for the whole valley and we get rid of another P, which is the parochialism.
The Pentictons think about the Pentictons and the Summerlands think about the Summerlands – we really should think about what is good for the valley and the Okanagan Partnership brings that. I’m extremely happy to be in the Okanagan because I like the mentality, the culture, the settler mentality and trying to solve the problems. I think I lived a long time in Germany and I don’t think these fantastic things would happen in Germany because we really can work together and that would be my message.
LOVEGROVE: I’m still undecided. I’m sort of like Heather, I would have probably written down “no” before we started and now I’m not sure because you know how you hope for the best and plan for the worst. Back to that Chinese word, crisis, we’re facing some danger.
So my pessimism is about how quick we can change, and plan for that, because I think we’ve got 10 years or less and we’ve got to get started now. And that’s why I would be pessimistic.
The one reason, besides this group, which, yes, thank you, was fantastic – it blew me away, I’m wondering if I’ve still got my socks on, blew my socks off, I think – The Okanagan Partnership, and this is not a paid ad, I’m not on anybody’s payroll, I just am really impressed when I see businesses big and small driving the sustainability agenda in a community. You don’t see that. I don’t think I’ve seen that anywhere. I’m not aware of that anywhere in the world where businesses are driving the sustainability agenda.
Usually they’re the ones dragged kicking and screaming by the residents and it’s almost the exact opposite here because, correct me if I’m wrong, I was told 10 years ago when I was here that we’re the fourth most popular place in the world for Americans to retire to. We’ve got a lot of deep-pocket retirees and as we’ve heard this week, they’re the ones most resistant to change. They want to freeze things the way they are.
So we’ve got, as I said earlier, some structures to overcome. If we can change quickly, if we can – what’s the magic, I’m not going to say “bullet” (I already spoke about something before that was a foot and mouth disease), but if we can find the lever, and that’s the key – if we can find the lever to change quickly, we can do it. I think education is a big key to that.
REDD: Thank you all so much. This has exceeded my expectations for the discussion and it’s phenomenal and it’s going to get widespread exposure. Our magazine, we print 25,000, and it gets distributed across the whole valley, Salmon Arm to Osoyoos. Beyond that, because I’m going to be creating a new web space, Okanagan Life web space that’s solely dedicated to these issues and we’ll have blogging features. There’s an opportunity for you if you care to, to put down more of your thoughts in writing, send it to us. We’ll use what we can in the magazine. What doesn’t get used we’ll put on our website. And secondly, the talk is over, but if anyone is willing to or wants to, I’d like to ask a couple more questions on videotape. This would go up onto our website and just asking your thoughts about how this evening went and the value of it. Thank you very much.
CHEN: Thank you for organizing this because the media has a huge part to do with the dissemination of communication and knowledge. (In background “Right”) The articles, Luke, that you sent – all the series that you guys have been doing on the Okanagan was one of the major reasons why I said yes, to come to support what you guys are trying to do.
REDD: Thank you.
GREENWELL: Here, here. It’s been so much fun we should form a supper club.
LOVEGROVE: We should at least give Luke a hand.
Much applause.
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