Interviewed by Kodie Cherrille.
Since many students will be voting for the first time, what would you describe as the role of municipal politics? What can city councillors actually do?
Once a city councillor is elected, the responsibility of the governing is not only to have a listening ear, but their biggest role in council is land-use planning. That’s the most important thing. When you develop your land-use strategy, you need to involve people. How do you develop the community in a way that takes in account all aspects of community growth, and all sectors — youth, taxpayers, seniors, and so on. A councillor’s most important role is, when they get in, not just to listen but also to incorporate their ideas into the planning process. Taking youth into account is challenging, as they are not taxpayers yet, but are still our future. In our community, about 19 per cent of our community is under 14. You also have to consider how you engage the youth. For example, when I was in council three years ago, we put in $500,000 into UFV to build the digital program, because we felt that it was important to keep that program in Mission. I think that’s one thing [a councillor] does: Invest in programs that affect the youth, to let them know we’re there for them.
Who do you view as your constituents?
All the residents in the community are constituents. It’s important to me, however, to connect with the youth. We need to make sure they’re the ones we engage with the most. If we don’t, they’re not going to stick around. Young people want things out of their city, and they want to be part of the evolution of the community, they want to get involved. To that end, I’m trying to engage the school district that gets the kids together and ask them, “How do you see this community?” They’re going to be the ones seeing the implications of changes 20 years from now. We need to make them feel like, not only that we’re listening to them, but also we’re actually taking their ideas and planting them into the community. People in politics are often afraid to give the townspeople a chance to get into it, and we hire consultants and outside people all the time. Even though there might be a mistake, having someone actually getting their idea realized will inspire others to start coming up with ideas themselves. It gets other people thinking.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
For myself right now, I talk with my kids, who have a little bit more experience with social media. I ask them, “How do I effectively communicate what I’m trying to say?” They’re my most effective tool, and they’re representative of others who use social media. They know best how to get my message out. Social media, I think, helps me better connect with younger citizens of Mission. My daughter does my ads. My kids know how to get my message out — I’m not as media-savvy as them.
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
People look at politics with a negative tone. But really, it’s about how you build a neighbourhood. We do have surveys that we send out, but it’s always the same people who respond to it, so we don’t really know how effective they are.
We’re a community that has a lot of activities, we have a lot of events, and I think we need to connect with people at these public events, and get them to feel like they have something to contribute. What they want to see as part of their community? What is it the people enjoy doing? I think our community is really keen on being outdoors, and we’re thinking about branding our community and how we should be seen to the world, but we want to get everyone involved. If it’s outdoor recreation, let’s use that as a tool to get more people involved politically. “Well, you like doing these things that are part of our community, and now what would you like to see here?” We have to start somewhere, and I think we have to start with people’s keen interests.
People underestimate the unity of Mission. Abbotsford was a place where the developers built, and built, and built outwards, it’s a little disjointed. We have a great opportunity here in Mission, because of the lay of the land, we can keep things close. Politics concerns itself a little too much with development, and that’s why, I think, a lot of communities are struggling.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
The thing I want to work on is our downtown waterfront. The first thing people see when they come across the river is this eyesore. We need to develop a waterfront that reflects what Mission wants to be. There are good models that are out there — there’s a place in Vancouver just built called Riverfront. People are drawn to water. They love walking by the water. But how do we create a waterfront development that’s specifically the people of Mission’s? We don’t want to make it just for tourists.
I like the idea of urban planning. In communities like Mission, we have ample opportunity to, once again, get the youth involved in this urban planning. Why aren’t we taking this to the university students, saying, “Here’s a waterfront opportunity. It’s a clean landscape. What do you do with it?” And we get people involved into turning it into something unique. Every community needs some kind of iconic structure, right? They’re talking about developing downtown into this high-tech industry thing. It’s not very fluid, and it’s not that great a business model. You need to build a residential model around it.
Successful retail stores, like local coffee shops, all run on the premise of good densification, so people can walk to that local coffee shop. You look around West 4th Ave and Broadway in Vancouver, and you see people everywhere. Where do they come from? They live in the immediate area, and they’re going to the flower shop, the grocery store, the bakery. You want that sort of densification in Mission. And you can do it; it’s not impossible. You just need the leadership to pull it off, and we don’t have that right now.
Everything below 7th Avenue in Mission is residential, and everything above 2nd Avenue is residential. Mission’s unique that way, having no intertwined residence-and-commercial model. It’s a good characteristic for a community. The key is to take everything below 7th, and recreate a new residential model. People need parking space. Well, turn the main streets into places to park. Why not? If you look at North Vancouver, you can walk all the way down the hill, right to the water, without having to get onto a major road.
You want to build a good residential neighbourhood. That’d include some row housing, taking advantage of the character homes that are here, trying to densify the neighbourhoods in ways that helps diffuse the character of a character home to the houses around. I want to see quality densification of 1st and 2nd Avenues. I’m not talking strictly about condominiums, though we’ll have some and it’s necessary, but we want to take advantage of the rolling landscape and the character homes.
It’s [also] just the poor lay of the land. There’s no proper street lighting, no proper sidewalks, but if we work on that, people will come. They say, “If we build stores, they come. If we make the street pretty, they’ll come.” But there’s three banks downtown! Who shops at the bank anymore? Retailers can’t sustain themselves if they have no customers. Who are these customers? The people of Mission. The ones that live close by will shop downtown, but people like me, who lives way up the hill, I’ll just decide to take the Cedar connector, go to Abbotsford, and shop there. There’s no purpose for me going downtown. Local retailers can’t afford advertisement like Wal-Mart can. They rely on foot traffic to stay in business. If you create a stronger residential mesh, you’ll get a stronger downtown. City Hall’s focus is just out-to-lunch. They’re wanting to redirect the highway, and it just doesn’t make sense. Why not take what we already have and make it better? It’s just a waste of money.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
