MLA Michelle Babchuk Visits Cortes Island

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - MLA Michelle Babchuk was on Cortes Island for a few days last week. She spoke to Cortes Currents after meeting with some of the island’s non-profits in the Village Commons. This was the third time she’s visited the island since she was elected in 2020.  “I'm hearing that Cortes actually has a lot of capacity and we've known that for a long time. There's a lot of not for profit groups here. A lot of them are feeling extremely underfunded,” she explained.  “I'm really excited because in my past visits there've been a lot of not-for-profits doing really great work at a grassroots level built specifically on need for the community, which is super heartwarming because it's a community feel,  but now we're taking a look at those organizations scaling up.  They are not dispersing little amounts of money that are not getting where they are needed.  I'm seeing a lot of collaboration with people  actually taking a look at where there is overlap, where the highest need is and being able to collaborate and scale that up so that you're actually hitting that next level of service delivery.”  Babchuk has visited a lot of rural communities in her riding.  Michele Babchuk: “I’ve been traveling through the North Island for the last four years, It's a large riding but I've been able to go to all of the communities at least once or twice  to see if the direction of the government in housing, health care, public safety, all of that is working for the community, and if not, what are the things that need to change. Rural communities are different from urban communities, different from metropolitan communities and sometimes it feels like we're fitting a round peg into a square hole. We need to be able to listen to the communities to make that happen.”