The City of Kamloops is updating its Social Plan to recognize changes in the social fabric of the community.

Council has voted to hire a consultant next year for $40-thousand dollars to revise the Kamloops Social Plan, which was first created 10 years ago.

Mayor Ken Christian says some social aspects have changed in the past 10 years.

“The landscape in terms of the needs of this community have changed dramatically with the advant of the opioid crisis. In 2009, there were probably about 100 heroin users in Kamloops that were merrily going along, and we were looking at perhaps an unfortunate two or three a year who passed away,” Christian says.

“In Kamloops, just as other communities that hosted residential schools, and in Kamloops with almost 7,000 urban Indigenous people, it seems to me that the existing plan did not pay enough attention to that subgroup as a group that would require a lot of recognition within the solutions that we are looking for as a community.”

Christian also says the updated social plan will need to better recognize Indigenous people in the community.