Is Prince George the right place to locate a military base?
City council wants to know and will be meeting with Lt.-Col. Torry White, commanding officer of the Rocky Mountain Rangers, next week to discuss whether there is any interest in the Canadian Armed Forces establishing a permanent base in the city.
Coun. Garth Frizzell thinks it’s a good idea.
“Picture the most strategic location in central BC,” said Frizzell.
“We’re not just the two rivers, the highways, the railroad, the airport, but we’ve also got incredible heavy industry and really widespread and diverse light industry. We’ve got a refinery, and a green refinery at that, two educational facilities with the college and university.
“This is an ideal place for support.”
White, who lives in Kelowna, is coming to Prince George for Monday’s Remembrance Day ceremonies and will remain in the city until Thursday.
The city’s standing committee on intergovernmental affairs was asked by council at its Oct. 1 meeting to discuss the army base proposal with White and try to gauge if there’s any interest from the federal government in making that happen.
Council and senior administrative staff are familiar with the Rocky Mountain Rangers locally and the Canadian Rangers nationally and have had conversations about the future of public buildings such as the Connaught Youth Centre, which houses several cadet organizations. The committee wants to hear White’s thoughts on where Prince George might fit in the Canadian Armed Forces’ plans.
“The committee is looking to engage in conversation of how best to support all of those national defence groups here in the region and on the staff side we’ll be looking to co-ordinate some meetings to explore that interest,” said Eric Depenau, the city’s director of administrative services, who also serves as an RMR captain.
“The standing committee is interested in having an informal get-together just to share some thoughts around aging infrastructure in the city and what the future of the Connaught Youth Centre might be, not that there’s any immediate plans. City council has a veterans and family community covenant and under that covenant Prince George has said that they’re looking for opportunities to support veterans, armed forces and their families and this is a continence of that covenant work.”
Since February 2011, Prince George has been home to the Rocky Mountain Rangers (RMR) Bravo Company light infantry army reserves, based at the former Meadow Elementary School in the Heritage subdivision at 687 Dornbierer Cr.
Bravo Company, with more than 60 members, recruits soldiers as reservists, some of whom are deployed to Canadian military operations overseas. There’s also an RMR reserve unit based in Kamloops.
Coun. Kyle Sampson said the intergovernmental affairs committee will be meeting with White to discuss what the city can provide to take advantage of local deployment of the reserves for emergency operations such as wildfire evacuations, which could further be enhanced by having a larger-scale base in Prince George.
“Beyond exclusively what the army base can provide from a national perspective, what can we do to benefit from that infrastructure being built here?" asked Sampson. “Can we tie in emergency management components to that facility that can be staffed locally and provincially and then backstopped in the event of major instances by the military? We’re not the experts in the armed forces. We want to have that conversation to see where they see the opportunities being in northern BC and how we can tap into that.”
Prince George Airport is home to the fourth-longest commercial airfield runway in Canada and having more substantial military operations in the city would finally allow the city to use that to its advantage. However, the 3,474-metre (11,400-foot) runway is nearing the end of its lifespan and within the next four years will have to be dug up and replaced. Having the Department of Defence establish a Prince George base might be a way to pay that repair bill.
“I know when we’ve had military air force aircraft at the airport they say this is ideal conditions for training,” said Sampson. “They can take off on Canada’s fourth-longest runway and be training in the middle of nowhere in minutes. It provides that connectivity to other parts of the world and that trans-Pacific flight time is lucrative to them.”
