Articles about UBCM's annual Conventions.
UBCM is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Community Excellence Awards. These recipients stood out for going above and beyond the purposes of local government in BC. They are innovative, provide direct benefit to their community, and demonstrate leadership in their field.
Panelists at the plenary session convened around the state of BC economics. Between the Minister of Finance, two economists and the CEO of the Vancouver airport, the bottom line was that there is no quick way out of this structural financial situation.
This didn’t happen in the last six months, and it didn’t happen because of Donald Trump, said David Williams, VP of Policy for the Business Council of BC. It’s a structural issue stemming from shrinking revenue and expenditures growing way too quickly.
Among the interrelated complex social issues being discussed at Convention – street disorder, housing, homelessness, mental health and addiction, crime – is the healthcare policy around involuntary care. Dr. Daniel Vigo, the Province’s chief advisor on toxic drugs and concurrent disorders, spoke at the session Disordered Downtown: Rethinking Care for Those in Need. We caught up with him and Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog afterwards to learn more.
Within 14 of BC’s largest communities more than 21,000 households are on the wait list for BC Housing support. More than 3,000 homes are on hold in various states of completion because they’re waiting on provincial funding.
The Province has announced that the timeline is being extended to introduce a new regulation for local authorities, under the Emergency and Disaster Management Act. The Honourable Kelly Greene, Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness, speaking at a Convention session, Climate Hazards & Housing: Risk, Resilience, and Local Action, delivered the announcement that new regulation will not take effect until early 2027.
Every year the UBCM Executive sponsors special resolutions that address priority issues. This year they get at some of the specific areas where coordination is needed to respond to complex social issues that are beyond the jurisdiction of any one body.
These resolutions will be individually considered by the membership at the first resolutions session on Wednesday morning, including one extraordinary resolution that proposes a new framework to evaluate resolutions in future years.
The plenary session at this year’s Convention will focus on BC’s economy, given recent data on the province’s finances, debt and credit downgrades. Speakers will assess how serious the situation is and consider challenges to getting the economy back on course. BC’s Minister of Finance will provide opening remarks followed by an economic overview from a managing director with the National Bank of Canada. Panelists will respond to the overview and take questions from the audience.
In a recent landmark ruling, the BC Supreme Court granted Cowichan Tribes Aboriginal title to 780 acres in the City of Richmond including fee simple lands. The decision sets important legal, political and practical implications for local governments across BC.
Join us during the UBCM Convention to learn more from legal experts about this precedent-setting decision.
The 2025 Convention event app is ready for use. The app provides convenient access to the Convention program including session descriptions, times and locations.
New this year, the app is integrated with the voting portal. Voting delegates can login directly through the app to cast votes for the next UBCM Executive, and in tie-breaking resolutions votes. Non-voting delegates do not need to login.
UBCM Resolutions are an essential part of local government advocacy in BC. Each year hundreds of issues are raised for debate at the UBCM Convention. The volume is an indicator of the wide range of issues that communities deal with – but the sheer number poses some challenges. UBCM Executive is proposing a new framework to streamline the process.