The Village of Canal Flats has received approval for a $100,000 Rural Dividend grant. The money will be used for economic development capacity and implementation. The community will be building on investment attraction goals, marketing, recreation plans and more.

“We are going to be hiring an economic development officer, to implement some of the recommendations that (our) economic development liaison that we had hired last year (made),” said Mayor Ute Juras.

The economic development officer will be a contract-based position that will pick up where the economic development liaison left off. One program Juras is hoping to see continued is the Business Connect Program, a program whereby the village supports the retention and attraction of business in the community.

When asked about how that program did in the community, Juras stated: “From what I understand, really well. Of course now that we don’t have anyone working on it, I’m not sure what the status of it is at the moment.”

Projects that the Rural Dividend grant will help move along include new washrooms and septic field for Tilley Memorial Park as well as recreation infrastructure.

“For the recreation plans, we just finished master plans for Tilly Memorial Park so we are hoping we can be started on that with the playground equipment,” said Juras.

Another project the community will be looking at includes signage for within the community and for along the highway. Juras said they’ve been looking at some highway signs, but its been a drawn-out process.

“(We’ll be) doing some of the signage in the village. The signage for the source of the Columbia doesn’t actually say ‘the source of the Columbia’ so we’ll be fixing that,” said Juras.

As the council of Canal Flats is still discussing its budget, Juras couldn’t comment if the $100,000 grant will be funding any of the proposed projects. She did confirm the Rural Dividend grant will go towards hiring the new economic development officer who will work on the projects.