LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “Being an effective champion requires deep knowledge, experience and quiet resolve to make things happen,” stated Joan Sawicki, land and resource management champion, and former provincial cabinet minister
“With the change of government in late 1991, all of a sudden land use planning and natural resource management was front and centre. We had Mike Harcourt as Premier and Darlene Marzari as Minister of Municipal Affairs. Both had come out of local government. They were very familiar with the urgent growth pressures and the ecological impacts that they were having. Then I was appointed Marzari’s Parliamentary Secretary. I had spent a term as an elected Councillor in Burnaby. So the Georgia Basin Initiative was a good fit for me,” stated Joan Sawicki.