With their term coming to an end, the youth councillors in Gibsons have put forward a proposal for a Sunshine Coast Youth Council.
In a report to the June 16 council meeting, Eilis Mackenzie and Gravity Guignard said the purpose of the youth council would be to “amplify the voices of young people on the Sunshine Coast.”
Mackenzie, who is graduating from Elphinstone Secondary this year, and Guignard, who’s in Grade 11 and expected to continue as a youth councillor, are the only student representatives at the municipal or regional district level on the Sunshine Coast.
Their proposed Sunshine Coast Youth Council would include delegates from Gibsons, Sechelt, the shíshálh Nation, the Sunshine Coast Regional District as well as representatives from Powell River, the qathet Regional District and the Squamish Nation.
“We wanted to get a really diverse and wide group of people – specifically young people in high school – together, who would be able to represent their areas, be able to speak up for themselves and talk about what their needs in the community are,” Mackenzie said, giving the example of the COVID situation. “I would totally imagine there’s a need for a network of study groups or something like that and that’s a resource that's kind of hard to pull together by ourselves. And that’s just one example that I can think of.”
Guignard said the youth council delegates would also report regularly to the local government councils “so that we can get some connection between youth and the councils.”
Mackenzie and Guignard said they’d like to see applications for council positions open up in September with the first meeting in late October.
They’re suggesting each local government contribute $50 per delegate to cover expenses such as travel and setting up a Zoom account so the youth council can meet remotely.
“We would like to hold bimonthly or monthly meetings in person, obviously if we're still in a state of emergency we would just be using Zoom,” said Mackenzie. “If we were doing an in-person meeting [the budget would cover] ferry costs or bus fare or food and drinks as well.”
Council voted to support the idea, and contribute $100 to the budget.
The youth council proposal has been forwarded to the other local governments that would be involved, and at their June 17 meeting councillors in Sechelt voted to support the project and fund one delegate at $50, but they didn’t make any decisions about how or when their delegate would be chosen.
Later in the meeting, during an official recognition of Mackenzie and Guignard’s work as youth councillors, Mayor Bill Beamish predicted the Sunshine Coast Youth Council would be “part of your legacy.”
He also thanked Mackenzie, who was lead youth councillor, for bringing issues like the Wet’suwet’en protests and questions of fairness and racial discrimination “that were of concern to youth in our community” forward to council and said he was looking forward to seeing Guignard move into the role of lead youth councillor in September.
