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 can city councillors actually do?
City councillors deal with day-to-day issues, so from the student perspective, it would be transit, getting to campus, dealing with parking on the streets, installing sidewalks. Anything that makes it more amenable to get to the campus. So, where the campus property ends, really the city takes over at that point. Whether it be in Abbotsford, King Road or McKenzie Road, that’s the city’s jurisdiction and that’s where the council comes directly into play with the students.
Who do you view as your constituents?
I’d have to say it’s everybody that votes. Whether you are a student, or just somebody who’s starting out in life, you know graduating from high school, looking for work, right up to being a senior. The thing with city council particularly, you have to deal with issues through the entire wide range. Where I do focus is on low-income and middle-income families. And that’s why I’m endorsing things, for example, re-doing the affordable housing strategy, making sure that it’s effective. Trying to bring in a childcare strategy for the city especially for working parents, single parents. That is a huge issue for them to get either education, or jobs. It’s a big barrier.
How will you receive or gather the views and desires of the entire constituency as opposed to just those most active around City Hall?
Several ways. One is online surveys. A lot of people aren’t available to come into city hall during city hall hours. There should be the ability to go online, read about an issue, and then come and question the council or express their views directly. Another way is through applications on mobile phones. The city of Surrey is experimenting with this right now, where it can be a simple thing like fixing a pothole, or an issue there — you can record it and send it in. Or it can be a broader issue.
So I see different methods out there, but I also see another concept of opening up city hall to the public. One of the ideas I’d like to explore over the next four years if I am elected is having that at the recreation centres. Perhaps one night a week, or on Saturdays and Sundays, there are one or two staff from City Hall who are there to take basic questions and direct where you need to go, to find out more information for you. Really just open the doors, so there’s no barriers, and that’s what I want. I want to make a no-barrier city.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
Well, that’s a really hard one with people who have already graduated from high school. How do you get out and reach them? So what I’m trying to do is look at creating a youth committee, where there’d be a representative from each high school in Abbotsford, both public and private. It would be elected by their student body to actually come to a committee at city hall and then advise council on issues affecting youth. And the idea behind that is, the kids that are in high school and in middle school, they don’t have a voice at all at City Hall. They can’t vote, if [they’re] under 18. The idea is get them engaged at an early age, so that maybe in five years, maybe in 15 years, we have more people participating in politics. Because I think that’s our future, I mean, obviously it’s our future.
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
I’d have to say, it’d be going back to community consultation. And I mean real community consultation. Right now, all too often when the public is called in, it’s between the second and third reading of the bylaw. Which means staff has done all the reports, and it is very unlikely city council is going to go back and redo those reports. The public should be consulted before the first bylaw is even read. And then as you go through each stage, there should be two to three stages of going out to the public as you’re evolving through the project to consult with them. I think that’s the biggest problem in Abbotsford actually, is the fact that the public doesn’t have a clear way of talking to council until almost the last moment.
I really believe in democracy, but I believe in real democracy, so if anyone has an issue, you can come to city hall and express it. Not where you’re going, “Okay, something just happened,” and you have to go to city hall after the fact. And that’s actually happened in a couple of neighbourhoods, where staff has actually proceeded on issues and the community didn’t want it, but it proceeded at such a fast rate all of a sudden that the project they were working on was implemented before the community could even voice their concerns to the appropriate committee.
Can you give an example?
Crossley Drive and MacLure Road, there was a no-left-turn island built there. My understanding is the community came to the traffic safety advisor committee in November. Staff said they would consult the community, and late December, just before Christmas, they sent out a letter saying that they were going to install a no-left-turn ban. And they gave the community one month to reply, but two weeks of that City Hall was closed for Christmas break, and they came back, they installed it, and then they came back to the community and said, “This is what we’ve done.” As opposed to putting the public first and consulting them fully.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
I think my top priority is getting the committees in shape. Right now we have a bunch of committees that aren’t working effectively, and I think we need to overhaul the committee process, because this is the primary place where the public can actually come and talk and advise council as to how things should be for their neighbourhood. One of the things I’d like to see is a minimum of six neighbourhood committees that would be made of residents of that neighbourhood.
Right now we have city-wide committees, and some of the members don’t even live in Abbotsford. So they might not necessarily know the issue that’s affecting the neighbourhood you live in. Whereas if we have neighbourhood committees made up of members of that neighbourhood, they would have a better understanding of the specific issues affecting the community. Often I find people who live closest to the issue have the best ideas to solve the problem. And then that information would be advised, given to council as advice. But really trying to put the public into the process, and trying to make it as local and as personable as possible.
I think the other thing with students is affordable housing. There’s not much housing here on campus, so we have to look at addressing that. I think we have to take another look at the U-District plan, and bring that forward. I know why it’s held up at this particular moment, it’s because of the OCP (Official Community Plan) review. But I think that is one of the top priority neighbourhoods to bring forward. And really think ahead 15 years where, what’s going to be around UFV? How do we want the community to be? Do we want to have, for example, a pedestrian bridge over the freeway on McKenzie, to make it shorter to get Downtown?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
