Langley City mayor Val van den Broek is seeking a second term on the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) board of directors, saying the national body has allowed her to bring national attention to “South of the Fraser” issues like rapid transit that affect the City, Langley Township and other Fraser Valley communities like Abbotsford and Mission.
“We had the chance to lobby the federal government for SkyTrain [to Langley]” directly,” van den Broek told the Langley Advance Times.
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A representative from a smaller community like Langley City has to be elected to the FCM board, unlike larger cities that get seats automatically.
“And they’re [the large cities] all north of the Fraser,” van den Broek commented.
As well, a candidate has to be nominated by council to run for the FCM board.
Directors of the current FCM board held their final meeting March 3–6, in St-Hyacinthe, Que.
A new board was expected to be elected at the annual FCM conference in Montreal in June, though van den Broek expects it could be delayed because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Mayor van den Broek is also vice-chair of the FCM Community Safety and Crime Prevention standing committee
FCM bills itself as the “national voice of municipal government since 1901.”
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Members include more than 2,000 municipalities along with 20 provincial and territorial municipal associations that represent more than 90 percent of Canadians.
Canadian municipalities formed the Union of Canadian Municipalities (UCM) in 1901.
The Dominion Conference of Mayors was established in 1935 and in 1937 the two national bodies joined to become the Canadian Federation of Mayors and Municipalities, which was renamed the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) in 1976.
dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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