The Cowichan Valley Regional District will likely fund an additional $30,300 to the Island Corridor Foundation to assist in its ongoing efforts to develop a shared vision for the deteriorating and mostly unused 220-kilometre rail line that stretches from Victoria to Courtenay.
Noting the important work the foundation, which owns the rail line, is doing to come up with a plan for the rail corridor, the CVRD’s committee of the whole voted unanimously at its meeting on Feb. 12 to recommend the board allow the funding to the foundation to help pay for the continuation of its vision-coordinator position.
The ICF’s CEO Thomas Bevan told the committee that vision coordinator Anna Russell has done an excellent job in her role, thanks to previous funding from the five regional districts along the railway corridor, and the foundation needs that work to continue.
He noted that four of the other regional districts have already agreed to fund $30,300 each to the position.
“I recognize the budget pressures that all parties are facing right now, but this is a really critical year for the [visioning] project in the effort to see something useful come from the corridor,” Bevan said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, as it was then called, provided $18 million in grant funding in 2023 to the five regional districts and 14 First Nations located along the rail corridor that make up the ICF to develop a shared vision for the rail line, and the CVRD received $600,000 from the funding towards the project.
The CVRD hired Stantec to facilitate this process for the district, and the consulting group is expected to present a comprehensive report to the board before the end of February.
The CVRD’s CAO Danielle Myles Wilson told the committee that the full $600,000 provincial grant has been spent on hiring Stantec to conduct the technical review, lead First Nations, community and stakeholder engagement, and to summarize findings and prepare recommendations towards a shared vision in the report for the board.
She said additional funds in the project’s budget were used to pay for CVRD staff time, communications and legal reviews, and $25,000 had previously been earmarked for the ICF to support their participation, so if the committee intends to recommend that the funding to the foundation be approved, it would come from the district’s strategic investment fund.
Ian Morrison, the CVRD’s representative at the ICF, said that the foundation wasn’t necessarily funded to the extent that the regional districts were for the process, even though the foundation is the group that is holding the process together, and he put forward the motion to allow the funding.
“It’s unfortunate that the province didn’t see fit to initially fund the ICF to do this work, and they have with our help and the help of the other regional districts,” he said.
Committee chair Rob Douglas added that one problem he has had with the process from the beginning is how the province distributed funding to the regional districts to work on their own exercises for a vision for their own specific regions within the railway corridor, rather than a vision for the entire corridor on the south island.
“Including all the regional districts in the shared vision is going to be necessary to ensure that whatever uses are identified for the rail corridor is going to be viable moving forward,” he said.
The committee also directed staff to write a letter to the Ministry of Transportation and Transit requesting that the province provide ongoing funding to support the ICF in continuation of their work.
