Prince George Mayor Lyn Hall has been a hot commodity at the Union of BC Municipalities Convention.
Hall has been a part of two presentations at the convention involving how PG handled the wildfire evacuation situation, and the importance of forestry to Northern B.C.
Cariboo Regional District Chair Al Richmond and Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran held a presentation on the leadership process of receiving wildfire evacuees and being put in the position of evacuation.
“I spoke about how the City of Prince George handled the evacuees who came in from the Williams Lake area, and what we put in place in terms of services.” says Hall.
One thing Hall wants to continue to work towards is being a part of the wildfire review and express what Prince George did as part of a debriefing.
“We’d like to shed some light on things we think that the province and other communities involved could partner in,” Hall explains. “The things that worked very well, the things that we need to fine-tune, things we realize we needed in place but didn’t.”
At Forestry Resource Series Breakfast #UBCM2017 #COFI #CFPA . Packed house!! pic.twitter.com/nAtUmk3d61
— Steve Thomson (@Steve4Kelowna) September 28, 2017
Wednesday morning, Hall was on a panel about forestry.
“I talked about our economic strategy as a city, and our strategy involves forestry as being the main economic pillar to our economic development.” Hall says. “Part of that was letting the group know that forestry is the foundation of our economy.”
Hall says he wanted to close the idea of forestry being a “sunset industry” and to indicate it is still going strong.
Wednesday night, Hall met with Claire Trevena, Minister of Transportation, as well as other representatives from Northern B.C. to talk about Greyhound’s recent indication they want to cancel routes from Prince George to other Northern communities.