Interviewed by Michael Scoular.
Since many students will be voting or taking an interest in municipal politics for the first time, what would you describe as the role of local politics? What can city councillors actually do?
Municipal politics is the grassroots for taking care of the community. So municipalities not only take care of infrastructure like our road systems and parks and house taxes, but they also set the stage for recreation: the parks that we have here, all the facilities that we have that are paid for by tax dollars (and some provincial and federal and external funding). The municipality is really the one that is responsible for the grassroots enjoyment of life.
At the municipal level we don’t create hospitals, we’re not in charge of medical care, but we create a nice environment to attract doctors and nurses to our area. We support the arts and culture, so if you go to Abbotsford Centre and see the latest band or entertainment, that’s local, and I’m sure you’ve heard lots of things both for and against that.
So I think it’s vitally important to get involved, and that’s just at city council. And then there’s school trustees as well at the municipal level, and they’re in charge of decisions around the schools. And there are all kinds of decisions that make people go, “Why on earth did they make that decision?” and you know what? If you vote for them, you can have a say in decisions they make, and you can phone them up and say, “Hey, what’s with that?”
Who do you view as your constituents?
Well, everybody in Abbotsford. In some cities they have burroughs, where a candidate represents a certain neighbourhood, but we don’t have that here. All eight candidates represent all of Abbotsford.
I guess the things that are close to my heart are some of the jobs or tasks that I’ve had over the years: I’ve been working for the past, almost seven years with the homeless in the Downtown Eastside. I’m retiring now so I have time to work here. Homelessness is certainly an issue. Certainly not a single issue — I’m also a past president of the Chamber of Commerce, so I understand the business issues and how businesses hire people and are the backbone of our community. I understand the arts community — I was appointed to the Abbotsford Arts and Heritage advisory committee, and I was also provincially appointed by legislative assembly to the BC Arts Council and served from 2007 to the end of 2012. So I have a broad perspective of the arts community. And you know what? It all ties together. So homelessness, there’s a lot of people that can be helped through being able to express themselves through art. There’s a tie there. And I also think in terms of our whole community, homelessness is not just the 40, 50, 60 people you see on the street. There’s people sleeping in their cars with families, or people sofa-surfing, they’re staying with friends, whatever they can do.
And so, to look at some of the reasons for that: what would that be? Being able to attract businesses here that can pay well, pay an affordable living wage (I think it’s pegged at just under $17/hour for Abbotsford to support a family). Affordable housing: not ghettoizing anybody, but having integrated housing and working with the province. The province and the federal government have downloaded a lot of expenses onto municipalities, and we need to, not rattle their cage, but open up a dialogue and say, “Hey, you know what, let’s do something about this.” Because what we’re talking about is I’m a British Columbian and a Canadian as well as somebody who lives in Abbotsford, as is everybody here, so we need to work together, not say, “Oh, my budget’s great now — you pay for that.”
How will you receive the views of the entire population instead of just those most active around City Hall?
I think part of it is up to the people who want to engage. For example, I go to town hall meetings, I’m out and about in the community, my phone number is published, my e-mail is published. People can write, e-mail, they can Facebook me and say “Hey, what about this or that,” have conversations — I’ve had coffee with people. So I can go out and about, but it’s up to them to take a step too, and also go out and about. And if we just run into somebody, that’s okay, we can take a few minutes or it can be a longer meeting. And I’d say that everybody on council or running for council would be the same.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
I think other than engaging with individuals and saying, “Hey, can you spread the word,” you know, I have my children, my grandchildren are in varying school systems, I know people through different groups and clubs that say, “Join in,” or they talk about what does it take to vote.
Somebody said to me something interesting the other day that has made me ponder. They said, “I bet sometimes people don’t vote because they don’t know how.” And I thought that’s enlightening, because I hadn’t — I feel like I’ve always known how to vote, I was probably going with my parents when I was a kid. So even to go through a process and say “Here’s what it looks like, it’s super easy, it takes a few minutes, unless you’re at that peak time of the day where everyone’s decided to go at the same time, and if you don’t know who to vote for, do some research, phone them, find out.”
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
I would never say of council, for example, “They’ve done this and this and this wrong,” and one of the reasons is, until you’re on the inside, you don’t know what pressures or situations they’re faced with that are confidential, can’t be disclosed. So I wouldn’t say, “Boy, what an awful job,” or “I would change all those things,” or anything like that. I would say they’ve done the finest job they could under the circumstances, whatever those might be, and I applaud them for stepping up to the plate and doing something.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
Some of the things I want to do are to address homelessness by encouraging the non-profits, because the city really isn’t in the business of providing service, but we do engage with non-profits. In Vancouver for example, they do offer grants to non-profits, and they say, “Here’s the kind of thing we want done.” So then the non-profits come forward and engage in some of those activities. We would provide an atmosphere and an opportunity for the non-profits to provide a continuum of service. I think there’d have to be an education component, because, as I say, people are looking at a few street homeless people and saying “If we clean that up, then we’re fine,” and that’s really not what homelessness is about. If we can start to address the root causes: that means affordable homes. I mean there are working poor that have to decide: “Should we buy groceries, or should we pay the rent?” Then they get behind on their rent; then they can’t catch up. So we need to find some affordable homes, and the province has stepped up with a program announced just at the end of last week. It’s being rolled out in Surrey, and we need it here too.
We need to attract business that pays well. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in BC, if not the highest, and we need to address that. Now, years ago, when I was president of the Chamber, I sat on the economic development commission of Abbotsford, and at that time, we were tasked with and we discussed attracting business, and that needs to be a focus again. I’m not saying it’s not, I’m just saying we need to reiterate that we need a focus of attracting well-paying, clean, compatible businesses to Abbotsford. Professionals are looking for an airport, entertainment, nice homes, and we’ve got all that.
[Specifically] what typically happens is a key staff member, plus a contingent of key business owners or leaders in the community, would identify some business that would be compatible with Abbotsford. They would start to make some phone calls, meeting with them, saying, “What can we do to bring you here, are you looking?” So it’s a bit like cold calling, but it’s finding out what businesses are on the move or what business is growing and might be wanting to expand and might want to expand here. And some of those may be businesses that are in the Lower Mainland, but need a different site. It’s a proactive sales job, really, in a lot of ways.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
