Let’s end poverty.
Let’s create gender equality.
Let’s ensure everyone on the planet has access to clean water, quality education and decent work.
And to realize those goals, let’s get some help from the City of North Vancouver.
Michael Simpson, the executive director of the BC Council for International Cooperation, has been making stops throughout the province to garner support for the United Nations document Transforming Our World, which lays out a framework of widespread economic, social and environmental change by 2030.
Simpson’s first official delegation to a council was an April 10 stop in City of North Vancouver chambers, where he beseeched council to get behind the plan to “state that publically.”
Responding to a comment from Coun. Pam Bookham that he might be “preaching to the converted,” Simpson discussed the power the city could wield as an example.
“If you’re doing the right thing and you are the converted, it doesn’t stop there,” he said. “People need to see your communities, realize it’s safe, it’s possible.”
The goals of the plan are almost universally lauded, but Simpson acknowledges he faces one high hurdle: “How do you make that real?”
After a meeting with Mayor Darrell Mussatto, Simpson said he selected the city as his first stop because the official community plan “harmonizes so cleanly” with the United Nations plan, citing climate resilience and sustainable transportation in particular.
Simpson also explained that he hopes the city will provide “an in” for the BCCIC to be represented at the Union of BC Municipalities conference this September.
If the City of North Vancouver adopts the UN goals, the UBCM would be an ideal place “to convince other municipalities in British Columbia to do likewise,” he said.
The document can be tough to defend, Simpson acknowledged, asking exactly how poverty could be ended by 2030.
“I have a hard time defending it and I love the document.”
Coun. Linda Buchanan agreed, noting the plan was largely aspirational. “But if you want to actually make a difference in the world you have to be aspirational,” she said.
While the federal government has stated plans to incorporate the goals into legislation, Simpson reminded council that the plan needs to be executed at all levels of government.
“The problem is that many of the goals are not solved at the provincial or the national scale.”
While the goals can be handled in various ways through multiple political lenses, Simpson emphasized that this is the only document of its kind.
“There is no Plan B and there’s no Planet B.”
Council unanimously referred the issue to staff, with Coun. Rod Clark suggesting the issue resurface by June in order to possibly advance the issue to the upcoming UBCM.
