Interviewed by Vanessa Broadbent.
Since many students will be voting for the first time, what would you describe as the role of municipal politics? What can a mayor actually do?
The role of the mayor is to lead things in the agenda, to lead the planning direction. You have your standard day-to-day operating things like bylaws and zoning and things that come up through staff, but the mayor can actually lead the direction of planning and budgets and sort of set the tone of how you write motions. I find that it really has an effect on how you write motions because a lot of the people that read the motions are swayed by what you wrote and that’s important
I’m looking at hopefully changing things to be more progressive and more forward-thinking kind of agendas. I think we’re still in the wild west old-boys-club kind of setting for politics. I’ve been on two terms [at the FVRD], so what I have seen is that we’re going into a more dictatorial closed-door kind of politics and it concerns me. That’s one of the reasons I jumped into the mayor’s spot as opposed to councillor.
The thing I like especially about municipalities or local government is that there are no parties. I find with parties it doesn’t work so well. They cover for each other a lot and that’s not a good thing in politics. You have to be real and honest and you have to vote with your conscience. Sometimes they contradict themselves. I noticed that when I was running for NDP, they didn’t always stick with their policy and ideology. They also demand party loyalty. I think your first job is to be loyal to the voters whether they’re left, right, or centre. You have to think about what they want most.
Who do you view as your constituents?
The residents of Mission.
How will you receive the views of the entire population instead of just those most active around City Hall?
I would be a lot more open to public community meetings, a lot more town hall-kind of meetings. If I had my way, I would have a lot more voting referendum type stuff if it’s a really big issue like the P3 water issue. I like that kind of thing where people really have a say in what’s going on, and if you talk to some of the people in rural areas where I’ve been elected, they will tell you pretty much that I stand up for the people as opposed to anything else.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
I came here didn’t I? I do a lot through my son. He was a UFV student in Mission. I have lots of his friends on Facebook so I chat with them a bit and I was always the cool mom that took them to rock concerts. I took them to their first rock concert and I took them to their first protest and stuff like that. I’ve always been surprised with how open they are with me. They always felt like they could talk to me and I think that’s continued in a way.
If elected, how would what you want to do be different from what council is already doing?
We have quite a different view on policy and issues and style of governing. Things are going more dictatorial. One of the things that they’ve done is taken away the ability to volunteer for committees. There were sweeping changes and that was easy to do because there was a whole new slate of mayors and councillors that were new to politics and I don’t think they knew how to compare what was, and what was coming.
The first term I volunteered for a lot of things. Now I can’t volunteer for the things that I’m a good fit for. What happened with Ted Adlem, I guess people like that style because he dictated that he would be the chair of all committees. [It used to be] that you would vote for who you wanted to chair each committee. The mayor is automatically the chair of council, but all the separate committees you would vote for a chair. There was only one councillor that actually made it through from the terms before. A lot of people just go with the flow because they are new.
I guess it’s good to have some continuity, some people that knew what it was like. I think when you’re running to have somebody that knows the system. If you come in green, it’s easy to be swayed by new changes and policies. They lack information on things that they want you to vote on and that’s just really bad politics. You need to do your research and you need the information.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
They did a new zoning bylaw for barging in Mission and as it was, there was already the ability grandfathered in for sites to do barging for industry. Once they put this new zoning bylaw in, it gave them the ability to really expand barging in different ways. There’s a lot of interest in developing the waterfront as a little community market and living place. Kind of like a Granville Island thing. I think they’re going in the direction of industrial over tourism and fishing. Fishing has been going on for thousands of years; it’s a good standby. It brings in millions of dollars in tourism. The last term with the current council, they’ve been unanimous on the barging zones and in approving contaminated soil site right in the flood plain. That was an environmentally extensive area, or marked as one before. I think [it’s] bad planning. I don’t know if I can reverse all that but that would be one thing.
There are a lot of initiatives that I would like to get going. For instance, more renewable energy as opposed to fossil fuel. That’s above local governments, but we can do a lot by encouraging solar. You could encourage incentives like homeowners grants and encourage people to retrofit for saving energy. The price of energy is going up and people are getting to the point of unaffordability for food and energy.
What kind of communication will you try to have with the police department?
Every year I get a review from them for the position I am in right now. I do work with them a little bit, although I would like to see more proactive measures [on], for instance, homelessness. You can save a lot in policing if you do a lot of proactive social programs: Housing First, and different kinds of housing for different kinds of homeless because you got some with mental disabilities, you got some addicts, and you got some that just couldn’t afford their rent. You need different options for different people; they don’t all want to be housed together. You need to have a safe environment that they can lock their door and have their own room.
Some of the different options should have amenities worked in for social programs to help them get to where they need to go to get jobs or get off drugs depending on what their circumstance was to start with. There’s a new study out that shows that it’s much cheaper to house the homeless than to police them. I would like to work on those kind of initiatives with the police as well.
How will you manage the wishes of the province or private companies vs. the desires of the public?
I do that already. I have a lot of public meetings. Sometimes it’s hard to get the information out there so the public actually knows enough to get involved, and that’s a real problem. I tend to run on consensus on a lot of things as long as they make sense. Generally, I find if the public is educated well enough ahead of time, they will tend to get involved in big issues that might affect them. That’s my way that I like to do things.
What would you change about the way the city currently uses its agricultural and urban spaces?
Agriculture, I try to preserve as much as possible because I think that we should be more sustainable and local. We don’t grow nearly enough of our own food and if there was any crisis, which there is all over the world, California used to feed us largely and so did Florida and they’re having incredibly tough climate challenges. California is running out of water and we need to be prepared now because the cost of food they just announced is going up 34 or 37 per cent.
I think that we can do a lot with sustainability, greenhouses for winter growing. I would like to see more neighbourhood gardens so that people can work closer to home if possible. If you don’t have room in your backyard or front yard to do a garden, I would like to see more community gardens situated around neighbourhoods on top of trying to protect the agricultural land reserve. I like Seattle’s idea of growing fruit trees in parks. People might complain that it attracts bears, but you need fruit from somewhere and the bears are already going to blueberry farms.
Many people do not vote because they say they never see real positive change started at a local government level. How do you address that without resorting to unrealistic promises?
You can never make promises because as a mayor I have to vote … [together with] the consensus of six councillors, whatever the majority wants is what they’ll get. So you can’t make promises. You can promise to work in a certain direction, and I think it’s important for young people to have a list of what candidates stand for. Even if there’s no one you can believe, at least go into the poll and make a protest vote or something. Last night I was at an all-candidates debate and there seem to be some people that you might want to vote for, but it’s kind of like a first date, you never know how real they are.
I have a track record and if you look at my website you can see what people say about the way I do stuff in area C, and that helps. It’s hard when people don’t have a track record; in fact, you would think if people are jumping into politics they would have a track record of community work. I had a lot on community work involvement. More as far as rallying to save Mission Hospital services, that was a couple decades ago when Mission used to be a full-service hospital and they cut all services like labs. As far as knowing who your candidates are, if they haven’t ever been involved with anything in the community, that’s a sign. It’s hard to know your candidates. People are really good at spiel and spin sometimes and you don’t know who is and who isn’t unless you do your research. Doing your research is important.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
