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 municipal politics? What can city councillors actually do?
What we actually do is just create and encourage new policy, and maintain the policies that are there. Changing permits and zonings and signing contracts. It’s managing the city, with the mayor as the lead and council the follow, but at the same time all working together as a team.
Who do you view as your constituents?
Anybody that resides in Abbotsford. But it goes beyond just the people that reside in Abbotsford because a lot of people have small businesses in Abbotsford but they don’t live in Abbotsford, so we got to think of them too, because they’re paying property taxes, the same as anybody else, and it’s actually higher than the residential property tax, so it’s important to consider them and their needs as well. Do they get a vote? No they don’t, currently. In the future that may change but currently if they don’t reside in Abbotsford they don’t get a vote. I hope that changes.
How will you receive or gather the views and desires of the entire constituency instead of just those most active around City Hall?
I mean social media is a great thing now. People can email you, they can tweet you, they can Facebook you, I mean I’ve got all that. So it’s easier that way, but I mean you just have to make yourself presentable, you have to get out there to where the people are. I could be sitting at Starbucks or Wired Monk or House of James, get to know the people, hear their concerns, but you have to be approachable. If they don’t feel they can go up to you and share what’s going on in their community, then A) they might not vote for you the next time and B) it puts a tarnish on city hall. We need a council that people feel comfortable walking up to and talking to.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
That’s what my tweeting is. This is all new for me as far as Twitter goes. Facebook, yeah, it’s been around for a while. I’ve got friends that are younger and then older friends with kids, and I just show them that, “Hey, you need to be a part of this,” because this city, one day we hand it over to you. It’s like giving a Christmas gift and the wrapping’s all already ripped up and there’s no ribbon or anything else like that and you can see what the gift is and it’s been passed along so many times that it looks like garbage. Whereas do you want us to give you something that’s nice. By the younger vote’s involvement, they can help direct where the city’s gonna go in the future.
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
For starts, we’re $100 million in debt. That’s not fair for you guys, it’s not fair for me either, but I’m a bit older than you, so it’s going to be passed down. That’s not fair. We need to get rid of that. We need to be a city that’s friendly. People have to want to come to Abbotsford. Right now we’re the boring city. I have relatives back east that know Abbotsford as the crime capital of Canada. We never used to be like that. When you were younger, the city was the place to go to, like “Let’s go there, raise a family, start a business!” It was the place to go. We’re no longer like that; we have to get back to that. And our current city council, I can’t say all of them, but some of them their focus isn’t in that direction.
My direction is to move us forward into the future. I’m an approachable person, and I would like to see our city be the same way. That when someone from Manitoba or Saskatchewan or Ontario comes here and they want to start a business, that we’re open for business. And currently, we don’t really give that vibe off. The current council does things a little different than the way I do. I don’t think we should spend the money and then have the vision, I think we need to have the vision and have the money follow the vision. And if we have a good vision, business will come, that’s just how it works because people get on board, they get excited: “Things are happening in Abbotsford, let’s go out there!” And that’s where I differ from some of the rest of them.
By vision do you mean specific policy or project or just an idea?
Vision for me is making Abbotsford the best practice in Canada, making Abbotsford the best practice in North America. That people can look at us and say, “Look what they did, they turned their city around. They turned around the homeless situation, they’ve turned around the business situation. They took an event centre that had no tenant and they turned it around,” and I’m hoping we get a great tenant in there and that just helps the economy but so that people can look at Abbotsford and say, “Wow, that’s a great town, how can we be more like that?”
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
There are some. Our bus system, I’ve said this time and time again: we don’t need to raise fares, we don’t need to raise property taxes, we need to lobby BC Transit and get better buses here. Our current bus system, a conventional bus gets three miles to the gallon. If we go to a vicinity bus, they get 33 per cent better fuel economy. If we go to a Mercedes shuttle bus, 22 miles to the gallon. The savings, just in the fuel alone, would make it feasible so that we don’t have to raise fares and then we can add more routes. You know, why do we have these huge buses driving around little tight streets like McKinley? It’s hard enough getting two cars to pass each other in there, let alone a big bus. So if you can eliminate the big buses that are rarely full — use them maybe during peak times when they might be full — but right now they’re running around, two-three people on them, that’s ridiculous at three miles to the gallon. Bring in shuttle buses, now you can fill them. They can go into communities that they couldn’t otherwise go into with the big buses, and now people can be reached further.
And then connecting Chilliwack — UFV, you guys have a service there, but it’s got to go beyond that. There’s the Fraser Valley Express plan, but that’s been in the works for a while, and it’s still not solidified yet. It’s in the works now; they’re saying 2015, first they said 2014. In 2015, are they going to say 2016? And I don’t necessarily like the model of it. I want something that’s focused more Abbotsford-outward. So that we can connect with Chilliwack, and we can control a little bit more about how we’re getting the connection so that it’s best for the students here, best for the seniors here. But also, if you want to go out there to a movie or to hang out with your friends, that you can get home and it’s not like, “Bus curfew, 9:00, I got to go home.” But you know, on the weekends, have a 1:00 in the morning bus, have a midnight bus, whatever so that you can get back to Abbotsford or friends from Chilliwack can get back to Chilliwack. That’s kind of a pet project of mine that I would like to work on.
Lowering the deficit is a big one, bringing the property taxes down, ending user fees. Yeah, you can say we never raised property taxes, but by adding more user fees on, isn’t that the same as adding property taxes? So I’d like to see us get rid of user fees altogether. And that comes from proper management of the funds we have. Right now, we’re spending in areas that we don’t necessarily need to spend in. If we manage — just like you, you’re coming to school, you got to manage your funds so that you can pay for your tuition and your books and everything else, even your going out for coffee with your friends, if you don’t have money, you can’t do it. So if you manage it properly, you can achieve your desired spending.
You mentioned areas we don’t need to be spending in, do you have an example?
The elephant across the street from us right now is the big one. That wasn’t necessarily managed all the best. Now they did get a new agreement there, which is good, but we can do better. It’s way overspent at City Hall — we got a lot of top-heavy management at City Hall — but yet we don’t have very many workers out on the streets. So they’re trying to do all the work, but they have four different bosses all telling them to do different things. So we got to correct that. We got to hire more people to work in the streets so we have safe roads, and less bosses sitting in an office making over $100,000 a year. So we need to balance things out. Right now we’re top-heavy. Top-heavy never works.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
