BC IMBA Rep Meets The Minister
Four members of the BC Regional Advisory Committee, me included, and the BC Regional Trails Co-ordinator, sat down with the honourable Minister of Culture, Sport and the Arts, Kevin Krueger. We had the opportunity to present why the BC government should pursue a long term relationship with the federal governments recently announced funding for trails through the National Trails Coalition. And just in case the feds don’t continue their economic stimulus incentives next year, we suggested the BC Trails Strategy in final draft form, be adopted to continue the expansion of recreation trail opportunities. Minister Kreuger was very receptive to our pitch and agreed there is plenty of room for improvement to promote BC’s extensive trail system to the world and provide support for the people building the trails.
The next step in the NTC’s program should be signing funding agreements with the lucky recipients of federal funds. This should be happening in the next two weeks with cheques to follow. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of disappointed people in Canada as the mere $25 million on the table was quickly diced up, BC got $3 million, one million each for winter motorized, summer motorized and non-motorized trails. As soon as it is official I’ll post the non-motorized recipients on my blog, stay tuned.