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It was my privilege to attend the 2025 Remembrance Day Ceremony. The turnout was fantastic. I was very appreciative to see all the youth and children at the ceremony. The NRRM’s Fire Rescue Team does an amazing job coordinating this ceremony. Thank you again to everyone who participated and attended.
Council has been working through a difficult site-specific zoning amendment. The November 10th, 2025, Committee of the Whole meeting was used to fully discuss the zoning application. Prior to that was an October 27th, 2025, Public Hearing that was well attended with in-person and written correspondence from both sides of the issue. If you are interested, you can look at the YouTube video of both meetings. Council has a few more questions that staff are investigating, so there will be another meeting and discussion about it for sure.
In September, we attended meetings with the Province at the UBCM convention in Victoria. I have been reporting out on those meetings over the last few weeks in the Northern Pulse. I have decided to continue with the “Mayor’s Message” here now. The last meeting I want to report out on is the one we had with the Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar. We started by thanking him and his staff for some of the funding programs we have been taking advantage of. Our community has been granted funds for wildfire risk reduction and Community Resiliency projects.
Then we advised the Minister of the poor state of affairs the forest industry is in in the NRRM. He was aware of our concerns. We pressed on the need for a renewed local forest inventory so that informed decisions can be made going forward about the state of our working forest. The fires have burned many millions of cubic meters of wood. Likely more than anywhere else in the province. With the largest community forest in the province, it is essential that we understand the current conditions and impacts on the Annual Allowable Cut.
The combination of fires and some new land use processes is potentially severely limiting future access to resources in our region. The Kaska-BC Land Use Planning process has started with potential impacts on our economy. The proposal is looking at 3 million hectares in the NRRM as conservation areas. We want to ensure the NRRM is part of these discussions.
Finally, we wanted the Minister to know that we want to be involved in the status of all the forest roads in the NRRM. Many of these roads have become important to us for wildfire suppression, forestry operations, trapping and other economic activities. We want to be consulted before any deactivation of these roads.
Just a reminder that these meetings were 15 minutes in duration, and we really didn’t get much of an opportunity to press our cases. We will see how the ministries respond to our various requests and keep moving our agendas forward. I hope to report some good news in the future.
Rob Fraser, Mayor
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