Action4Canada - March 09, 2022


Motion to ask Health Minister to allow access to recreation for ALL Maple Ridge citizens

Topics
recreation access mental health recreation request
Hosted by
Tanya Gaw
Mentioned
Mayor Councillor Youssef Councillor Robson Councillor Duick Councillor Metis Bonnie Henry John Karina Energy Vegan Gordy Chair Jeекс Kate Kyle
How Do I Protect My Mother？ How Do We Deal with The Media？

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

147.72

Word count

1,410

Sentence count

100

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Mayor Bonnie Henry and Councillor Gordy Robson introduce a motion that would see all citizens in Maple Ridge, BC have access to public recreation facilities paid for and maintained by their tax dollars, without restriction, in order to minimize social isolation and promote positive mental health.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 In recognition of the mental health challenges of our citizens, I brought forward this motion
00:00:08.420 last night that the mayor requests the Provincial Minister of Health allow all individuals to
00:00:13.620 access civic recreation facilities paid for and maintained by their tax dollars without
00:00:19.120 restriction in order to minimize social isolation and promote positive mental health with a carbon
00:00:24.580 copy to the UBCM and other BC municipalities. Here's how my co-workers voted and a caption
00:00:30.700 of the debate.
00:00:31.360 Thank you, Mr. Mayor, you have the motion in front of you, but I'm going to read a bit
00:01:00.480 of background statement, a bit of background information to help you in this motion.
00:01:07.360 We know access to recreation has many benefits. The BCRPA, the British Columbia Recreation and
00:01:12.780 Parks Association, BC's Guiding Association on Recreation, states, ours is a story of
00:01:18.920 creating community connectedness and individual well-being based on the knowledge and recognition
00:01:24.060 that recreation and active living, as well as access to parks and the natural environment,
00:01:29.140 have significant impacts on our physical and mental health. In Maple Ridge, we recognize
00:01:34.100 the benefits of recreation for our citizens, and as such, investments in recreation programs
00:01:39.060 and facilities are a priority. Meaningful leisure activity contributes to the well-being of
00:01:43.960 our citizens. The programs we deliver at our facilities reduce isolation, promote community
00:01:49.480 pride, increase self-esteem, build connected communities, strengthen family bonds. Participation
00:01:56.180 bridges all ages, ethnicities, abilities, and economic backgrounds. In Maple Ridge, we believe
00:02:01.140 recreation is a right. And as such, we assure all citizens, regardless of socioeconomics, can have
00:02:08.180 opportunities to participate through our subsidized programs. We strive to create facilities and programs
00:02:13.940 available for people of all abilities. Recreation from a health perspective is the best preventative health
00:02:20.180 measure we can take to reduce illness. Our citizens want access to civic facilities for themselves, their
00:02:26.340 children, and their parents. Senior isolation, mental health, community disconnection are all serious
00:02:32.420 challenges we are experiencing. The province conducted a survey in April to May of 2021, asking British
00:02:40.020 Colombians about the impact on their lives from COVID-19. Nearly 47% of respondents said they have seen their mental
00:02:47.300 health worsened due to the pandemic. Over 394,000 people filled out the survey. With the recent lifting of
00:02:55.540 many capacity restrictions, the acknowledgement that recreation contributes to one's mental health and is
00:03:01.060 critical in prevention, we ask that public facilities be open to all our citizens to help promote equal
00:03:07.060 opportunities to recreate to all our citizens and to start the healing and reconnection our community members
00:03:13.540 are so desperate for. And just if I if I may, before I go to council members, I will say that I received a
00:03:21.780 significant number of emails from various residents that are requesting access to our facilities. We did
00:03:29.620 operate them in the earlier stages of the pandemic with considerable work safe programs in place to ensure that
00:03:39.700 everybody would be healthy and well and be able to recreate and that was it. It was difficult to get that mobilized, but we did it and
00:03:48.340 certainly had the persons that are writing to me and I would imagine that many of you are also receiving the same are
00:03:57.460 are looking for essentially tax refunds on something that we're not able to do. So I think that this is certainly something that makes sense to see what we can get facilitated through the Minister to
00:04:07.700 ensure that people do have access to something that they are paying for and comfortable that our staff will facilitate
00:04:15.700 safety and wellness for all. So with that on the speakers list, first I have Gordy, please. Councillor Robson.
00:04:25.700 Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to say that I think we should be leaving the matters of public health to the province.
00:04:35.700 And to Bonnie Henry and I don't think it should be decided by politicians. Thank you.
00:04:43.700 All right. I believe that this is a request. This is not a dictate. It's a request for facilitation.
00:04:53.700 Thank you. Councillor Youssef. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And through you to staff. I was under the impression that a notice of motion is to present the motion. But it seems like we're voting on the motion.
00:05:03.700 Well, it's this is rattled off at the rather last moment. It's because the mandates have to a degree been lifted that this is just a matter deemed expedient as opposed to what it's titled as.
00:05:21.700 1301 is matters expedient as opposed to notices of motion, which is 1600.
00:05:31.700 Okay. So this is a matter deemed expedient, not a notice of motion.
00:05:35.700 That's correct. We're just going to write a letter. That's the request of Councillor Metis that Council endorse that effort to write a letter.
00:05:43.700 Yeah. Well, thank you for that clarification while I appreciate the spirit of where the letter is going.
00:05:48.700 And of course, I to a great extent agree the fact that we need recreation and we need to be outside and we need to have that human connection.
00:05:56.700 I would have loved to have seen this motion come forward a year or so ago, whereas now.
00:06:09.700 As we're drawing down the mandates and all the restrictions are being lifted.
00:06:19.700 I'm not sure if we're spending their wheels and getting nowhere as that seems to be the direction that we're headed in either way.
00:06:26.700 And I really appreciate the spirit of where you're coming from. I just wonder how effective we're going to be.
00:06:32.700 Thank you, Mr. Kate.
00:06:35.700 And maybe I'll go to Councillor Duick first, if I may, as you spoke to your own, and then I'll circle back to you, Councillor Metis.
00:06:43.700 Please go ahead, Councillor Duick.
00:06:45.700 Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate where Councillor Yusuf is coming from.
00:06:48.700 I think it I'm taking it to be we want just clarification because as the mayor said, there was a change.
00:06:57.700 There has been several changes. And so it really is where what is happening in the future?
00:07:03.700 What is the the Dr. Henry's what she where she going with this? 0.99
00:07:09.700 Where's the Minister of Health going with this? Just so we can advise our citizens, because as was said,
00:07:16.700 there's some things that are not within our jurisdiction. So it's really just seeking clarification if I'm correct.
00:07:24.700 And so I'm prepared to support it. And yeah, I guess the notice of motion, because it's under 1301 is can be a little confusing.
00:07:34.700 Yeah, Councillor Metis, please back to you.
00:07:36.700 Thank you. Through you, Mr. Mayor.
00:07:38.700 The reason that I've I feel and I appreciate Council's indulgence to make it a matter of expedition is just that
00:07:45.700 the overwhelming correspondence that I'm sure you're all receiving from citizens with questions that we just don't have the capacity to answer.
00:07:54.700 And where I am seeing and we all we're all seeing restrictions lifted, there's still a segment of our population who doesn't have an end date for when they can access recreation.
00:08:04.700 And so it would be good for us to at least have some context on when that that date will arrive.
00:08:11.700 And of course, the the other piece about citizens paying for these facilities and not having access, I think that we owe our taxpaying citizens at least an attempt to get an answer.
00:08:23.700 Thank you.
00:08:24.700 Yeah, I mean, the chief financial officer did provide some information on the approximate value of that 6%.
00:08:32.700 And that but unfortunately, it is not within municipal purview to be able to discount that because people are not able to access that facility.
00:08:40.700 And we learned that right at the very beginning of the pandemic when we actually had to close it.
00:08:44.700 So in that question was asked then and it's now being asked again.
00:08:48.700 So with that, really, this is the only option we have to see if we can get it opened faster.
00:08:54.700 All right.
00:08:55.700 With that, all those in favor, please.
00:08:58.700 Anyone opposed?
00:09:01.700 Councillor Robson, Councillor Youssef opposed.
00:09:05.700 John Karina Energy
00:09:09.700 Vegan
00:09:11.700 Who was Kyle yankcraft Park?
00:09:14.700 Maybe by the next year.
00:09:15.700 I'll go back to that.
00:09:16.700 I'll go back our next week.
00:09:18.700 After that, we've going back to that hospital acid and 601, Youc kangawatt, make sure that we're going to be able to look for our tax cuts in the situation,
00:09:25.700 And we'll go back to that page for the palavras saying para Jeекс to the Sun.
00:09:28.700 We made sure that ourёл city, it will go dunno. 0.89