Government Relations
Led by Wes Graham: twenty years of elected leadership, a federal chief of staff, and eight years running a private sector enterprise through complex regulation. Our advocacy work focuses on the Kootenays, but our reach expands across the province, as project-based or ongoing counsel.
Government relations & advocacy
Local and regional government across the Kootenays. Find the right decision makers, frame your case in their language, and build the relationships that move files forward.
Stakeholder mapping & management
Know who matters before you need them. Map the landscape around your project or issue, then build and manage the relationships that protect it.
Indigenous engagement
Consultation built on real, long-standing relationships with Nation leadership. Plans that meet legal obligations and earn genuine partnership, not box checking.
Regulatory & permitting navigation
Land use, environmental and operational approvals from someone who has been the applicant. Practical guidance through the processes that slow projects down.
Funding & grant strategy
Find the programs you qualify for and shape applications that stand out to the people scoring them, backed by a record of securing major infrastructure investment.
Strategic communications & issues management
When a project meets opposition or the story turns, you need steady hands and plain words. Crisis communications experience federally, town halls and public engagement locally.
Principal-led and partnership-ready.
You work with the principal: someone who has held elected office, run federal political operations, and operated a business under the regulations he now helps you navigate.
Two decades of elected leadership
Town of Creston councillor (2005 to 2014) and City of Cranbrook councillor (2014 to 2026). He knows how motions move, how staff reports get read, and what actually sways a vote.
Federal political operations
Chief of Staff to MP Rob Morrison since 2019, leading stakeholder engagement and intergovernmental coordination across municipal, regional, provincial and federal levels.
The operator's perspective
Chief Operations Officer of an 820 acre agricultural enterprise with 200 peak employees. CFIA inspections, international social audits, LMIA processes and land use permitting, from the proponent's side of the desk.
Provincial reach
2nd Vice President of UBCM, the voice of BC local government. Working knowledge across the province's municipal and regional leadership.
Indigenous engagement that delivers
Fifteen years of government-to-government relationships with First Nations: a 2009 MOU of friendship, the first joint council meeting of its kind in BC, and a six-party treaty agreement returning 176 hectares to reconnect the Nation with Kootenay Lake.
Engagement at scale
Citizen engagement reaching thousands of residents on budget decisions. Helped secure more than one hundred million dollars in infrastructure investment across water, sewer, transportation and community facilities.
Built on the experience from the job site and the boardroom
I am Wes Graham, based in Cranbrook, British Columbia. I spent twenty years as an elected municipal leader, first in the Town of Creston and then in the City of Cranbrook. I have served for 6 years as a Director on the Regional District of East Kootenay, and as Chief Operations Officer of H&R Orchards Group of Companies.
I know how to sit at a table with people who do not agree and find a way forward.
I have done it negotiating municipal budgets, facilitating community engagement with thousands of residents, working through contentious land use decisions, and building government-to-government relationships with First Nations over fifteen years. Good systems and genuine relationships are not mutually exclusive. You need both, and I build both.
Tell us what you need.
Health and safety, government relations, or both. Send a few lines about your business and we'll reply with next steps.
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