Eric Bonham and Kim Stephens presented “CAVI Year One Progress Report” at Ministry of Environment Workshop
Creating Our Future
In February 2008, the Ministry of Environment invited Eric Bonham and Kim Stephens to provide a progress report on Convening for Action on Vancouver Island, known by the acronym CAVI. The venue for their presentation was the second annual ‘water workshop’, held in Nanaimo.
To learn more about the workshop program, click on Vancouver Island Region of the Ministry of Environment hosted second annual ‘water workshop’ in Nanaimo
CAVI Explained
The genesis of CAVI can actually be traced back to 2002, explained Eric Bonham, a founding member of the CAVI Leadership Team and formerly a Director in both the 
Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Municipal Affairs.
“When I was still with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and a member of the Board of the BC Water & Waste Association….we took ourselves up and down Vancouver Island. We asked the same question: What will Vancouver Island look like in 50 years?“
“There was a sense of urgency. We wanted to talk about and establish some way of collaborating on Vancouver Island. We found that the north is not talking to the south, and the east is not talking to the west.”
“So, we said why don’t we pull these people together. And we did! In 2005 we held the first Meeting of the Minds in Parksville. We brought together a diverse group of 40 people from three levels of government, academia, NGOs, First Nations and the business sector.”
“This led to a consultation workshop in conjunction with the Water in the City Conference in September 2006. Out of that came CAVI.”
Exceeding Expectations
“We exceeded our expectations in Year One because we did not expect to accomplish everything that we did in 2007,” stated Kim Stephens, Program Coordinator for the Water Sustainability Action Plan for British Columbia.
“It was John Finnie, CAVI Chair, who said…. ‘it’s 2009 in 2007’ ….because in Year One we are already at a point which we thought would take three years to reach.”
Links to YouTube Videos
To view the joint presentation on YouTube, click on the links below:
- Eric Bonham: CAVI Explained(10:45)
- Kim Stephens (Part 1): What the cell is to the body, the site is to the region(10:00)
- Kim Stephens (Part 2): 2008 program elements for the New Business As Usual (5:13)
