Mayor Michael Muzychka believes some eastern Canadian politicians are more open to the idea of supporting pipelines and the energy industry after Olds town councillors and other municipal politicians attended a convention in Quebec City.
“I think we really made some headway. I think we’ve changed a bunch of minds (of) mayors and council people from Quebec and Ontario,” Muzychka said.
Muzychka admits that some of the people they spoke with were initially more adverse to the idea of pipeline construction. But through conversation, they had their minds opened.
“Once they understood the situation a little bit better, how it benefits everybody, some of them seemed to open their minds,” Muzychka said. “Some of them were pretty steadfast in their views on it but overall, I think we convinced some minds, for sure.”
That meeting was the annual Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) conference, held May 30-June 2.
“We wanted to start a dialogue. I sit on the AUMA (Alberta Urban Municipalities Association) energy and infrastructure committee in Edmonton," Muzychka said. "We talked pretty much all year leading up to going to Quebec City to send a really positive message about Alberta energy."
Coun. Mary Anne Overwater who also attended, said that the issues around Alberta energy require education.
“There was lots of talks about educating the people down East about Alberta’s plight for pipelines,” Overwater said.
“I think a lot of people just need to be educated. They’re not, so whenever we talked to people we tried to educate them on that.”
O-NET, the community-owned Internet, phone and TV service company in Olds, was another point of focus.
Councillors promoted O-NET during the conference and are seeking a meeting with individuals on a federal level about the local Internet service provider.
“If we can get our story out there about O-NET and what we’ve done (we want to do that) because so many people are interested wherever we go,” Overwater said. “They’ll say ‘where are you from?’ We’ll say ‘oh from Olds, Alberta’ and they say, 'oh, we know Olds, we know your guys’ O-NET.’”
That kind of recognition of Olds and O-NET is something Overwater is proud of.
“I mean it’s awesome. We’re a town of 9,200 people and people all across the country know O-NET. It’s a huge asset for our community because businesses can get huge files that they couldn’t get before.
“So many communities and cities also are so envious of our product, so somehow we’ve got to get it out there to more people,” Overwater said.
During the convention, the councillors heard from the leaders of Canada’s federal parties speak about issues that matter most to municipalities such as affordable housing, infrastructure, clean and accessible water and of course, pipelines.
“Ahead of the election that was, I think, very, very important and they all drilled down. Knowing that we’re municipality leaders, they drilled down into the issues that are important to us,” Muzychka said.
