Council votes unanimously to delay definition of city's role in health and housing until February

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Recovery plan for B.C. to be presented today

B.C.'s much anticipated economic recovery plan will be revealed today. At the start of the pandemic, the provincial government set aside $1 and a half-billion dollars for economic recovery. Premier John Horgan and Finance Minister Carole James will announce how it will be spent at 1:30 this afternoon. You can watch it live on the Government of BC Facebook page, Twitter account or YouTube channel. We will bring you details of the announcement on our news update at 3 p.m.

Nanaimo—Ladysmith MP Paul Manly to host town hall on Guaranteed Livable Income

People interested in finding out more about a Guaranteed Livable Income can tune into a virtual town hall meeting today. The idea of providing a minimum annual income to Canadians is being studied by a senate committee. Senator Kim Pate and a panel of experts will explain the basics and talk about the pros and cons. The Zoom meeting event is being hosted by local MP Paul Manly. He says support for a Guaranteed Livable Income has been a Green Party policy since 2006. Manley says the COVID-19 pandemic has given the idea traction.

"There was a real scramble to ensure that Canadians were taken care of and the CERB is a type of guaranteed livable income payment. There's been some recent polling as well that shows that people want a different system in place for the social safety net and I think that this crisis with COVID 19 and the economic crisis that has been created by it demonstrates that we don't really have that social safety net in place for people."—Member of Parliament for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, Paul Manly.

The town hall starts at 4 p.m. today and you can register at the website: Paul Manley, MP.

Council cautious to define role in health and housing too quickly

Nanaimo city council has decided to delay defining what role it will play when it comes to health and housing. It had planned to create a position statement, a guiding document that outlines its values and goals on housing and homelessness. But a staff report presented last Monday concluded the document needed work and recommended it be sent to the city's health and housing task force to be refined. But, the city councillor who chairs the task force, Erin Hemmens made a motion to delay defining the city's role for six more months.

"I didn't want the Health and Housing Task Force to wrestle with necessarily, what is the city's role. I think that's our job as nine council, to do that. And given that we're in this process in possibly reorganizing ourselves around a new mandate in this realm, that I'd like to defer it. Give it six months and I can digest it, we can all digest it and we'll have a lot more information in terms of where we're at in terms of health and housing."—Councillor Erin Hemmens.

Council voted unanimously in favour of delaying the discussion until February. Meanwhile, the Task Force Action Report on Health and Housing is due at the end of October.