Pouce Coupe is like ABBA. If you aren’t a fan, there’s something wrong with you.
Pouce Coupe is about 1,370 kms from the B.C. legislature, and when locally elected representatives meet up with cabinet ministers to advocate for their residents, they sometimes feel every kilometre of that distance.
Most of the province is beyond Hope and Pouce Coupe feels like “the forgotten stepchild,” says Marcel Woodill, who is not this Marcel.
Councillors Kurtis Rabel, James Wall and Woodill trekked to the Union of BC Municipalities annual conference in Victoria last month, along with nearly 200 other mayors and councillors. They lobbied the province on a range of issues, including some things that many southern communities take for granted.. like basic road maintenance.
Or the blinking light they have been asking for… for 14 years!!!
Or the myriad of other services and programs the province is downloading onto municipalities without additional funding. Policies that may sound great in Victoria, but which make little sense to villagers living 15-and-a-half hours away.
‘If you suffocate the economy so much that you demand and prescribe… or you set a utopian expectation of how things should be done that it’s unachievable… then instead of something happening in that direction, you kill it completely,” says Rabel.
The councillors dropped by our recording studio in the legislative press gallery for a group chat on the state of provincial finances, over-regulation, a disturbing rise in skepticism of government, some surefire solutions to turn BC’s economic ship around and a whole lot more.
For any cabinet ministers reading this, if you don’t know where Pouce Coupe is or haven’t yet been – don’t you think it’s time?
Podcast producer: Rob Shaw