This page is dedicated to a few key issues that are impacting our community, informed by council meetings, personal insights and guided by your voices, including updates to content. 

All descriptions and actions described below are in cognizance of the separation of powers and responsibilities of our government; see chart from the Regional District of Kitimat Stikine (RDKS) below. 

My responsibility is to represent the people of Kitimat. This includes when services that fall under another level of government are not meeting the needs of Kitimat, my role is to advocate for my community, hold the responsible government accountable, and work collaboratively to find solutions. 

Topics

• SUPPORTIVE/OLDER ADULT HOUSING - LONG TERM BEDS 

• HIGHSCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

• COMMUNITY CONNECTION AND LOCAL ENGAGEMENT

• KITIMAT'S YOUTH

• GENERAL HOUSING

• LOCAL INDUSTRIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Supportive - Older Adult Housing - Long-Term Beds

Those who spent their lives building Kitimat, deserve a community that takes care of them.  

I made this chart from the 2021 census. The three largest groups in Kitimat are people aged 50 to 64, almost a quarter of our residents. Keep this in mind.

Our population is an interesting one. Many of the people who built this town came during the Eurocan and Methanex years. They raised their families here and chose to stay. Today, they share the community with a newer and often more transient industrial workforce. Those two populations have very different needs, and Kitimat has to be ready for both. 

As a registered nurse, I see the pressure point that this causes directly in our healthcare system. Our acute care beds are increasingly occupied by older residents who no longer need acute hospital treatment, and require alternate level of care (ALC) services. Having these residents in acute care beds results in inadequate level of care, attention, and fruitful activities for the population.

 At the same time, keeping residents in acute care when they are awaiting an appropriate continuing-care placement puts additional pressure on hospital capacity, limiting our ability to care for patients with higher-acuity needs and increasing the cost of delivering healthcare.

When there aren't enough appropriate care options in town, residents who built this community are often forced to relocate to Terrace, Prince Rupert, or farther, separated from their spouses, children, grandchildren, and neighbors during some of the most important and vulnerable moments of their lives.

We need two actions:

1. Reduce the pressure by making it easier to age in community.

The first step is preventing people from reaching a point where hospital care becomes the only available option. That means investing in preventative healthcare, appropriate housing, and community-based supports that allow seniors to remain independent for as long as possible. 

The Kitimat Valley Housing Society  (KVHS) is working tirelessly to address housing infrastructure. They're working on two major projects, a 12 bed dementia-supportive care unit, and a 60 unit seniors housing project. Council has already approved $3.35 million to help service the seniors housing complex, alongside an additional $500,000 related to provincial funding requirements. However, the provincial $1.3-billion funding intake that was expected to support projects like this was cancelled in Budget 2026, creating another barrier to getting the housing built.

In this video below, you can see our MLA, Claire Rattée advocating for the community, and accountability from the province for this funding.

As a councillor, I will use every tool at our disposal to ensure those who built our community have a bed for care and comfort. Kitimat has been a significant contributor to provincial taxes through our industrial activities, and it's time for a reciprocal investment in the people who built and continue to sustain this community. This issue doesn't only affect those who built our community. It's our healthcare system. It's our housing market. It's our workforce. It's the overall livability and functioning of our community. 

For me, this means a depth of collaboration, and consultation with the KVHS, particularly with their broad multi-community development partnership plan, our MLA, and Kitimat's 50+ Centre to continue lobbying for funding and grant acquisition. At the municipal level, I will also support land acquisition, expedited permitting & application processing, and the judicious use of revitalization property-tax exemptions where appropriate. If we can use these tools to facilitate major industrial investment in our community, we should be prepared to consider how they can also help deliver the housing and care infrastructure our residents need.

Addressing this issue also means giving older residents more choices about how and where they live. Someone who wants to remain in the home they have lived in for decades should be able to do so. While, someone who would prefer a smaller, more accessible home should not have to leave Kitimat simply because that option does not exist here.

When someone chooses to downsize, it can also make an existing family-sized home available to another household ready for that opportunity. We also have fantastic teams at our community health NH services, and hugely impactful local non-profits such as CDC, TSW, & KCSS who make it easier for our older residents to thrive at home; this is equally part of the equation.

2.  To broaden our resources for alternate level of care (ALC) and dementia-supportive beds, I dedicate key actions including:

• Work with Northern Health to advance the land transfer and seek a resolution to the current two-year delay, so that the community can move forward with the care capacity it needs.

• Advocate for increased provincial funding for home and community care services that enable seniors to age in place, such as personal care, housekeeping, and meal preparation. 

• At the same time, we need to enhance Kitimat's livability. This combined strategy works to aid in the recruitment of health professionals who can support our residents to age at home with better-resourced community and home healthcare.

Inaction at this moment cannot be an option.  We need to make sure Kitimat remains a community where people can live with dignity, surrounded by their family. 

HIGHSCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE

Mount Elizabeth Middle/Secondary School opened in September 1958, with additions in 1968, 1969 and 1974, it is roughly 68 years old. This is a topic that many in town are familiar with, and at the same level, has impacted. 

The infrastructure of the highschool is well known to be on a clock. It was made particularly evident in a November 2025 town hall, with our MLA and opposition critic for Infrastructure. See video below of our minister being asked about the state of Kitimat's highschool

In September 2024, SD82 closed and relocated 10 classrooms in the MEMSS middle school wing due to structural compromise "to ensure the safety of staff and students" according to CMSD Superintendent Tracey MacMillan. Then in October 2024, there was "rot noted in single story middle school wing."

The need for repair is not new either, with MEMSS being the number one capital expenditure priority for CMSD since 2010. It was also the top priority for demolition/replacement from 2016–17 onward. 

Yet nearly a decade later, a replacement project has still not received provincial funding. However, we've received encouraging news from our Superintendent’s Report to the Board, with MEMSS now being considered a top infrastructure capacity priority for the ministry of infrastructure. 

To make this clear, the decision to replace and fund a school ultimately rests with the provincial government and School District 82, not the District of Kitimat. But that does not mean I would have no role to play as council member.

As council member, I will work collaboratively with our School Trustees, MLA, and intergovernmental allies to work for the replacement of MEMSS. This needs remain visible in provincial infrastructure planning, Kitimat cannot be forgotten. This is where my neighbours' children learn, where my neighbours build community, and where our future professionals begin choosing our town.

Kitimat should not have to accept compromised infrastructure as the price of being a northern community. Neither, should you, in our municipality, bear the tax burden when the Province cannot act quickly enough for our safety. I commit to sitting at the table, and fighting for the investment our students, teachers, families, and future residents deserve.

(While our infrastructure needs updating, maintenance of our skilled education professionals becomes another crux of action).

COMMUNITY CONNECTION AND LOCAL ENGAGEMENT

Kitimat is dealing with a lot at once. 

• Addiction is taking a toll on families, 

• Our volunteer base is shrinking 

• Our ER is too often closed when people need it, 

• Local businesses report difficulty getting Kitimatians in the door in our economic landscape. 

These are different problems with different causes, and dealt with by different levels of government. But there is one thread that runs through them, and it's how connected we are to each other. 

A town with strong relationships fills volunteer rosters, shops locally, notices when a neighbour is struggling, and organizes quickly when something matters. Connection does not substitute for services and infrastructure, but it's the thing that determines how well we hold up while our services are being adapted. 

The 2025 Business Walk shows one version of this.

The top challenge our businesses named last year wasn't rent, staffing, or supply chains; it was a lack of customers/economic climate. 

The district has a role to play here, and does so already, through the policies and programs from our economic development coordinator, and our excellent Chamber of Commerce. As a councillor, I come with knowledge of the crucial work being completed, and that we still need a better-connected Kitimat for our people, and our businesses to thrive. 

As is often the case, the residents of Kitimat are the answer. 

In office, I plan to encourage efforts seeking to bring community engagement, social interaction, make being a neighbour easier

• Making municipal spacing, permitting, and information easier for residents and organizations to navigate, so that volunteers and non-profits are not spending their limited time navigating unnecessary administrative barriers.

• Strengthen the use of public spaces, by supporting markets, festivals, outdoor programming and vendors in our community without compromising safety or the character of our neighbourhoods. 

• Encouraging partnerships between the district, businesses, schools, non-profits, volunteer groups, and industry,  to support relationship building and effective use of resources.

Nechako Centre's revitalization is also central to this mission. 

That is the role I want to play on council. Ensuring fiscal responsibility; removing barriers; letting people who are already doing the work, simply do the work; and creating more opportunities for Kitimatians to connect with one another.

Kitimat has invested heavily in becoming an attractive place for industry. We also need to ask what makes it attractive for the people who will build their lives here.

There is a new proposal, which I also see being integral to this issue: The Kitimat Indoor Entertainment Centre. As a current citizen, I implore you to provide your voice in this project through this survey.

This proposal has been developed, supported, and organized by community leaders and organizations. It is "exploring the idea of a community-owned indoor entertainment centre in Kitimat, with a bowling alley, indoor mini golf, an arcade, and a dedicated space for youth." 

The solutions for Kitimat, need to come from Kitimat, be built by Kitimat, and be enjoyed by Kitimat.

As Councillor, I commit to ensuring this proposal gets a serious hearing and supporting municipal engagement in filling a long-needed gap in our town.

KITIMAT'S YOUTH

As a registered nurse, and younger member of Kitimat, our community faces a mental health crisis, and one which is particularly afflicting youth in town. This isn't an issue unique to Kitimat, however, we have a unique capacity and population to address this. The right investments, in the right places, can actually reach everyone. 

The youth in this community are the measure of whether this place is working, right now. They will be the next wave of workers, parents, volunteers, leaders, and community. 

If they leave and don't come back, or if they grow up here without feeling that this town is theirs, that is a community problem, and a workforce problem. It shows in the staffing of our ERs, in a reliance of on teachers working under Letters of Permission, in the 'board fatigue' of our local organizations, and eventually, a tax base that cannot support the services which we rely on.

We need a strong connection with local colleges, tradeschools and universities to develop the talents which will continue building Kitimat. This is the key to our workforce, and the key to thriving population.

Kitimat Youth Council

One of my priorities on council is the re-establishment of a youth council for Kitimat. An effort has already completed by the x̄á’isla Nation, where they are providing paid education for their youth in the skills to lead needed their community.

• Leadership and teamwork

• Robert's Rules of Order

• Running effective meetings

• Taking meeting minutes

• Participating in hybrid meetings

• Band Council Resolutions and supporting community decision making

• Planning and leading youth projects 

Programs like these are what build a confident community. To learn first-hand, with, and from the people who built this community is how we develop a workforce that will continue to help it succeed.

Our industrial economy, health-care system, trades, small businesses, nonprofits, and public institutions all need the next generation. At the same time, young people need opportunities to see themselves as part of those institutions.

Council can help bring those pieces together.

I want to see a Kitimat where a young person can graduate high school, recognize their neighbours and say, “There is something for me here.”

GENERAL HOUSING.

My discussion on older adult housing already begins to tackle this problem, but there is more to this conversation.

Kitimat needs to plan for 627 additional homes over the next five years, and 1,304 over the next twenty years - (Kitimat Interim Housing Needs Report 2024). 

At the same time, there is a mismatch between what housing exists, what Kitimatians can afford, and what actually meets our needs. 

Our housing market is filled with single detached homes, and, according to the 2024 housing needs report, with little diversification for a changing and aging population. This aligns with community conversations, which surface issues with accessibility, seniors housing, and low-income friendly dwellings.

When looking at cost, the BC Northern Real Estate Board reported a December 2025 "Average Selling Price [of the] residential detached house" at a price of $426,800 in Kitimat. Compared to Prince Rupert's $446,805 & Terrace's $560,636, our town finds affordability in comparison. 

However, this apparent affordability hides a problem in our community.  Dual-income industrial households, fixed-income seniors, service workers, and young people starting out do not experience that number the same way. 

As Councillor, I commit to supporting mixed-use residential development on our zoned land, and engaging in competitive processes to attract developers; with an emphasis on supporting local and regional workers.

Yet again, the revitalization of the Nechako Centre remains central to community needs. 

We also need to talk about Kitimatians who don't have a home.

These graphs provided by the 2025 BC Housing Homeless Count demonstrates some important information about our community.

However, the most useful information about this issue came from sitting with people who've been through it, and with the people who work with them. One message has come through repeatedly.

Connecting people with the right services early, matters.

Almost everyone I spoke with pointed to a period of instability. A job ending, a relationship breaking down, or a health crisis. They said a phone call to the right office would have changed the outcome. Many said they were either unaware of services, or didn't think they would qualify.

• The Community Development Centre runs a Homeless Prevention Program and Housing Resource Centre

• Tamitik Status of Women runs one too, along with a day shelter.

• Kitimat Community Services runs Reaching Home and a rent subsidy program for people facing eviction

As I'm told, time and time again, If residents had  been connected to services earlier, in periods of higher stability, much of the issue could have been prevented earlier. 

This is also a budget question. 

Homelessness is expensive in our community.

An individual who is unhoused ends up in our ER rather than a clinic, or, in an unnecessary interaction with our police services rather than a housing office. Even on this website, on my financial page, you can see that police, fire and ambulance take up about 22% of our operating budget for 2026.

Prevention efforts both allow our neighbours to thrive, and reduce end-service stress/cost for all Kitimat residents. I could speak to the hospital perspective of trying to address this concern, but for the sake of brevity, know that this is unsustainable for our healthcare, and a mountain that weighs upon my colleagues.

LOCAL INDUSTRIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

I touched on this topic briefly during my 'Who is Ankur?' page, and the work I've done. 

Kitimat is an industrial town. 

Our industry built Kitimat, continues to employ our neighbours, covers a large portion of our tax base, and creates opportunities which other communities our size have been asking for; see my Kitimat's Finance Page.

I support the relationship of industry and our town, but accepting industry, does not mean accepting every impact of development without question. 

Our major operations create benefits regionally, provincially, nationally, and internationally. However, the impacts of traffic, health service demand, infrastructure use, and environmental degradation are experienced by Kitimatians, and others across the North West. 

Rio Tinto

You'll hear the largest point of contention with roots in decisions made between 2013 and 2016, but their effects remain relevant today. The Kitimat Modernization Project was a multi-billion-dollar rebuild of the smelter. It reduced "emissions by nearly 50 per cent" overall, including significant reductions in fluoride, particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and greenhouse gases.

However, they were granted an amended permit for a 56% increase of Sulphur Dioxide (SO2).

The province granted permission to modernize, but did not mandate them to install scrubbers to protect the community.

Kitimat residents pushed back. Community advocates Lis Stannus, and Emily Toews fought for the residents of Kitimat at the Environmental Appeal Board (EAB), challenging Province's 2013 permit amendment which increased the smelter’s permitted maximum daily SO₂ emissions from 27 to 42 tonnes. Their appeals of the permit amendment were ultimately dismissed in 2015 - court ruling here.

In 2017, our mayor, Phil Germuth further stated that "he'd like Rio Tinto to install the scrubbers of their own accord, ultimately it's up to the province to make the rules."

The issue didn't end there, as Kitimat residents fight for accountability. Stannus, Toews, and our Unifor Local 2301 challenged the approval of Rio Tinto’s Environmental Effects Monitoring Plan as well in 2014.

The EAB initially denied their right to appeal the Plan, so Local 2301 took them to the BC Supreme Court, which ruled in Kitimat's favour. 

The issue then returned, and was mediated, resulting in changes to Rio Tinto's permit and monitoring plan in 2019, including a human-health threshold tied to B.C.'s ambient air-quality objective for SO2.

This brings us to where we are today, we still have no scrubbers, but Kitimat residents banded together, fought for, and received substantially stronger human health threshold permitting and enhanced mitigation requirements. A huge win for our town, however, transparent health monitoring and accountability shouldn't require years of litigation from two outstanding teachers and a local union.

As our mayor was quoted in CBC, two primary concerns were:

• The long-term health impacts of even low-level SO2 emissions 

• The fear that the existing monitoring stations don't measure SO2 levels in outlying outdoor recreation areas.

Since then, one of these concerns has been better addressed than the other.

The 2019 settlement also resulted in the creation of the Kitimat Airshed Group (KAG); bringing together residents, Unifor 2301, Haisla Nation, the District of Kitimat, Northern Health, Rio Tinto, LNG Canada, provincial regulators

We have also improved monitoring at Kitamaat Village, Riverlodge, and the Whitesail neighbourhood. This is also alongside a SO2 alert system for our town.

Those are all things Kitimat got by being vocal of industrial issues. Not by waiting.

LNG Canada 

My page on Kitimat's finances covers their property tax exemption, so I'll leave that topic over there. 

This project brought the largest private investment in Canadian history to Kitimat, totaling $40 billion dollars, alongside thousands of jobs, contracts, and significant economic activity across the Northwest.

With this, the conversation includes how we monitor and understand the impacts of operating one of Canada's largest industrial facilities beside our community for decades.

During periods of significant flaring in 2025, we saw that LNG Canada began offering to pay residents living closest to the facility to temporarily relocate, accompanied with non-disclosure agreements.

This concerned some council members. With Michelle Martins asking to void the NDA and allow them to keep the support. This request was denied, with the representative citing privacy concerns, and a need for confidentiality.

Operational concerns also followed. The warm/wet flare also developed cracks in February 2026, requiring excess methane burning to prevent backburn and reduce stress on the faulty flare tip. 

A freedom of information (FOI) request from between Oct 2025 - Jan 2026 found that the warm/wet flare averaged approximately 45 times its permitted volume, and at the same time the cold/dry flare averaged approximately 40 times its permitted volume. 

The provincial regulator also took enforcement action, when it found LNG Canada to have broken its permits for black smoke events that lasted 2 hours, and 7 hours respectively.

Through these issues, residents approached me reporting increased coughing, respiratory irritation, difficulty breathing, allergy-like symptoms, nosebleeds, and increased reliance on inhalers during periods of significant flaring. I helped them report it. I brought it to council, to community forums, and to the LNG town hall at MEMSS.

These reports do not prove that LNG Canada caused these symptoms. They do, however, justify examination when residents are reporting impacts to their daily lives during periods of known operational upset.

A Stantec report ending Oct 2025 (prior to high periods of flaring) examined air-quality data from the Haisla Village, Riverlodge, and Whitesail monitoring stations and modelled LNG Canada's contribution to nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide during periods of flaring. 

The report found "NO2, SO2, and PM2.5 are less than the BC AQO for the September 2024 to August 2025 period” and that flaring effect is “small to negligible” and cannot be discerned from local industry and traffic during that time period.

There is, however, an important limitation in what that assessment can tell us. Some of LNG Canada's highest documented flaring volumes, occurred afterward, between October 2025 and January 2026, with equipment cracking in February, and an acid-gas incinerator being offline for a full month.

Unfortunately, that later period also overlapped with equipment and data-integrity problems at Riverlodge, the only permanent community station monitoring non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs). KAG's reporting identified equipment integrity issue through late 2025 and early 2026, including an elevated reading which ultimately had to be invalidated.

During the same timeframe, at the end of October, the BCER had completed its Roving Air Monitor deployment in Kitimat, which could specfically report Benzene and other NHMCs.

What this means is that during a period when residents had heightened concerns and LNG Canada was experiencing abnormal levels of flaring, part of the information we would want available to help answer those concerns was incomplete. I believe this in itself warrants a conversation, and if a cumulative impacts assessment were being asked by other municipalities, it would be worth joining in.

My council delegation.

Kitimat sits at the end of a chain. The gas is fracked elsewhere, transported through other communities, and liquefied here. Dawson Creek, Hazelton, Squamish and Terrace, communities joined in our LNG chain, sent letters to the province for an independent cumulative health impact assessment.

Any genuinely cumulative assessment of the province's LNG supply chain would likely involve Kitimat, whether or not our municipality requested one. As the host of our nation's largest private-sector investment, I thought we should ask for it alongside them. 

Residents are concerned, and a letter is the lowest-cost first step available to a municipality that wants better information about its own residents.

Our council voted 4 - 2 against a motion from Gerry Leibel in sending this letter, going against the cumulative requests from other municipalities in asking about the health of their residents, and ours. 

I believe Kitimat should be willing to ask for better information, support neighbouring communities seeking the same answers, and make decisions about major industrial development with the fullest possible understanding of its impacts on the people who live here.