Interviewed by Katie Stobbart.
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 municipal politics? What do city councillors actually do?
Basically city politics are ruled by BC government, so under the local government act. Basically it’s up to the city politicians to examine proposals, rezoning applications; basically a lot of their role is to administer the requirements of the local government act.
Who do you view as your constituents?
Everybody.
How will you receive or gather the views of all your constituents as opposed to just those most involved at City Hall?
I want to be available to everyone, and I think my background lends [itself] to that; in fact, I’ve worked in diverse types of roles. In terms of the student population, I do have a master’s in counselling, so I have been a student extensively myself, so I understand the needs of the students and I understand the value of an education. So right now I’m also a part-time professor at Pacific Life Bible College in Surrey teaching counselling courses. I value education to the extent that I’m sowing it. That ties in with the needs of students to get jobs. We have to be business-friendly but there’s some catches to that. In my feeling it has to be environmentally friendly business. We already have some environmental issues in our area, in fact our air quality is poor. It’s because of the funnelling — it’s not our fault — we’re funnelling all the Greater Vancouver air pollution down into our area here. Does it make a difference? Well, you know, in the past couple years we’ve travelled extensively to places like Hawaii, Palm Springs, South Korea, as well as Canadian points, and it’s only in Abbotsford I need to use eye drops. Isn’t that telling? I bring them along to all these other places and I never need them, then I come home and go, “Oh, my eyes are feeling sensitive — what is this?” This particulation in the air is major, and it’s also coming into the ground and causing all kinds of pollution, not just air.
Right now actually, I’ve got an active association/friendship with a member of the Sikh community — or quite a few members — but I don’t know if you recall, six years ago I ran, did a co-campaign with Surjit Atwal, who has graduated as one of [UFV’s] students in the last year and a half. So through Surjit I do have the ear of the Sikh community quite extensively. He and I were actually co-founders of something called the Sikh-Christian Initiative about seven years ago, which was an attempt to build bridges of friendship between the two communities, starting with that. And I haven’t missed AbbyFest, which is a mult i… different faith groups that meet and I just feel, you know, I’ve got a good friend in the Hindu community, Korean community — I’ve got a daughter-in-law who’s Korean actually — I just feel we have to be available to not just the main groups but the minority groups as well. Because I have been a businessman in [Downtown Abbotsford], I understand the needs of business, but my business was a little different; it was focused on social services, so I also understand the needs of the disadvantaged, and I also, even after selling that business, worked for a while as a prison chaplain, so that really got me in touch with even what we would look at as the low end of the spectrum: a lot of drug addicts and formerly homeless and the prison population, so I think I can reach into most communities. I guess part of my work — I am also a clinical counsellor, so I’m always working with people with problems and working to solve those problems, so on my big signs you’ll see on the bottom is “Working to build a better community” and that’s what I want to do.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in municipal politics?
Well, this interview is a step. Also I am working with a group of university students on my campaign who are helping out, door-knocking and so on. Some of them I met in the Darryl Plecas campaign and we developed a friendship. So I understand that there has been a lot of apathy by students in past years for municipal elections; I think they don’t see it as so important, or maybe they also feel their vote is not going to make much of a difference, but I’d like to challenge them on that because what you have in terms of not all of them are local although they only have to be in this city for six months to qualify as a voter, so I would think you’ve got a pretty substantial constituency of voters here. I mean, Canadian citizens and six months in the city. So you know, if they did vote, they could make a difference.
Do you have any specific strategies in mind to communicate that message to students?
I’ve got an active Facebook campaign, and also LinkedIn, and Twitter, and I’m encouraging students, friends, whatever, to repost those, reshare them, retweet, just to get that message broader. Actually I do have a group of young people that actually UFV students that are actually out trying to get the message out as well.
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
Well, I don’t want to be antagonistic with this statement, but one of the things that actually drove me to throw my hat in the ring was the homeless[ness] issue. You know, it’s just — how many years have we been talking about it? Can’t we act? Can’t we … you know, it’s like we get two factions that are fighting back and forth. The nature of my business that I operated in downtown started off … I’ve been a foster parent, a level three foster parent for over 20 years and I also got my master’s in counselling, and I thought, “How can I put these two together?” I developed a therapeutic fostering program that I was able to sell to the Ministry for Children and Families. That expanded to where I was providing brain injury services for ICBC and rehab services and WCB, and that even expanded into private senior care. When we would get a client or request for proposal, and we got some real doozies — I mean there was one foster child who had been a hit-and-run victim and he had serious brain injury and his payout was $7 million by ICBC, to give an idea of the nature or scope — we got 50 pages of information about this guy and could we resource him, and we never said no, we can’t do it. We had a leadership team of three of us, we would go down to the boardroom with our coffee cups full and the coffee pot on and we’d shut the door and spread papers around for everybody and the question always was, “How can we resource this individual?” not “Can we?” How can we do it? That became a success story; that was our first client with ICBC and we got tonnes more after that, but homelessness, can’t we do the same thing? Can’t we get the parties in a room, a cloister, shut the door, say “Okay, it’s not a matter of can we make it work, it’s how we’ll make it work” — can we get that determination, can we get that from the councillors? We don’t seem to have that right now; we don’t seem to have a willingness to work together to build a better community.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
A specific project, of course, is the homelessness. I probably could have been happy to let it all happen, except with the homeless. All we needed was one more vote to pass that homeless shelter. I’ll be that one more vote … I worked for part of a year with Langley Salvation Army. I was their capital campaign coordinator for their Gateway of Hope. It’s actually a three-storey facility that houses about 60 homeless people. There’s three levels; there’s an entry-level emergency shelter, then they can stay longer on the second level, then on the third level they can stay up to two years. There’s counselling, job-training, and they’re helping to reintegrate them into society. Now, before that happened there were a lot of homeless in Langley; there were a lot of objections (“not in my backyard”); there was a townhouse complex across the creek who goes, “Oh, it’s going to be disastrous to us.” It hasn’t been. You drive by that on the bypass and I’ve never seen even anybody lounging outside who looks like a homeless person; it’s clean, it’s effective, it’s doing a great work, and it holds 60. We have a centre here that holds 38 — and we’re what, double the size? We need more, we need more of a response, and there are responses available, so why would we say no to a permanent housing solution for 22 — I know it’s a small part of the 130, but it’s a start. It’s better than what we’re at, and it’s like, the province was going to fund it for 60 years, and we said no?
I’ve heard a proposal [the Dignity Village] and that would be okay as a first step, as long as you’re also providing counselling and services, so that they can move up. They come here, and we say okay, as you get clean, this is the next one you can move up to which is a more permanent housing solution, like maybe a Centre of Hope.
So as a city councillor, what would you see the City’s role being in a project such as the Dignity Village?
Well, I would, I mean, I hear that’s not going to get approved, and again I think, “Oh, no, not again,” I mean, I know it’s one of the opponents of the facility that was going to be built behind Abbotsford Community Services. I don’t really care who is for or against — let’s just get something happening.
You know, it’s like, what happens then is everybody’s got their special interest, and goes “we don’t like that, we’re not going to approve that.” We just keep getting no approval year after year after year, and it’s like, there’s a starting point. If that’s what we can all agree on, let’s start there. But just because it’s not somebody else’s grandiose idea, it’s a starting point, it’s a place to start.
I would [see the City supporting that], and I would also — I hear that the money that was lost on this 22-bed facility possibly can be retrieved. If that’s the case, I would like to see both because then, you know, we have parties fighting for this or that one, but let’s do both. We need them, so then hopefully we can bring, I mean it’s, like I say, I’m a counsellor. Let’s work with conciliatory responses and get something happening. Something needs to happen.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
