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?
The role of the council member is to advise the mayor and to work with the community to improve the community. They send in an agenda as to what they’re going to do, it’s printed every week and it allows citizens to get in touch with council members. A lot of it is just zoning bylaws and such, but there are some important things, too. If the community doesn’t know about these things, they get through without public conversation. That’s a scary thing.
For example, on August 18 of this year, the council put through what they called a “piece of information” where they were going to add $15,000 into the landfill-planning budget. The $15,000 was to be spent in order to look in to whether we should take curbside waste from Abbotsford. There was a couple of questions asked about this, but if you go into the minutes [Ed. note: relevant information begins on page 140] — if they’ve been put up yet — it just says that a “lively discussion” took place. Minutes are official documents — they can’t be tampered with. Once they’re passed, they’re passed. Under normal minute-writing, the person asking a question is noted, the question they ask is noted, and who answered and what the answer is. Me and Mike Scudder (who was once a Mission councillor) asked, “Why are we doing this?” We’ve spent a lot of money on our landfill, and it only has a certain lifespan that takes in the waste of Mission. All of a sudden, we’re talking about taking in three times the amount of waste without actually talking to the community about it.
In that meeting’s agenda, there was a letter from the City of Abbotsford, thanking us for considering this proposal. So we asked, “Where did that come from? Has this been discussed by council?” We didn’t get an answer, but you could tell by the look on their faces: No, they didn’t come through council. I then asked, “Why would we entertain such an idea?” Our landfill would fill up three times faster than it is now, and we’d quickly end up in the same situation as Abbotsford, where they have to have their garbage trucked out. The mayor said that we would make money off of this. But once we have to start shipping our garbage out, our waste management costs will go through the roof. And since 80 per cent of taxes in Mission come from residents, this will directly impact the people.
Councillors should be holding each other accountable. We can’t just say in the minutes that a lively discussion took place. That says nothing to the community, and is not really legal. Councillors should talk to the members of the community, to really ask, “Do we need this?”
Who do you view as your constituents?
The citizens of the community.
How will you receive the views of the entire population instead of just those most active around City Hall?
To communicate with those who are not active or unable to make it to City Hall, I have my own Facebook page. Community meetings work. You need to get out there in a proper way. If you’re going to have a town hall meeting, letters in the mail would be more effective than taking out an ad in the paper. Put it on a website, get a Facebook page.
The council would go to these meetings, and listen to what the people at the town hall have to say. Take knowledge from that meeting, and build the community from there. There hasn’t been a town hall meeting in over a year — the council didn’t like what they were hearing, and quit doing them. People said to members, “change your attitude,” and they didn’t. They simply changed the meetings.
And if you look at the Mission Hot Seat questions, you’ll see that the CRMG doesn’t respond. And when the CRMG does respond, all the members of CRMG post the same response. Cut-and-paste. That’s the way they work. From what I’m hearing out there, [citizens] want more interaction, they want them to discuss issues, and come to a consensus as to what the best way is to do something in this community, whether it’s cleaning up downtown, helping the homeless, or better public safety. But there is no discussion. The way it goes now, an item comes up, the council votes and blocks, and that’s it. It’s been described as a benevolent dictatorship, because you have no say. “You know nothing, we know everything.”
A councillor needs to be out there in the community, talk to people, and discuss issues — not hide them. If you get comments that are unfavourable, look at them, see if they are legitimate, and work with them.
Are you doing anything to address the lack of student interest in local politics?
I would like to do stuff like that. I’ve talked to Maureen [Sinclair, of Mission Parks, Recreation, and Culture]. One of the questions we came up with was, “How can we interact with youth?” I’ve been thinking about it for a bit. For one thing, I don’t think old people should be telling young people what is good for them. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, the council went to high school student councils, and held a [student-led] forum, and the students described what they wanted in their community. That should be brought back.
It’s important that these kinds of discussions are student-led, for two reasons. One, it teaches them how to communicate with each other. Two, it’ll teach them a few things about running meetings. We’ll be there to guide them, of course, but the discussion should be coming from the peer group.
[To get the ball rolling on this], you approach the schools or the Parks and Recreation department. Maybe Community Services. Maureen said it’s a good idea, that we’d talk about it after election time. We have to get youth involved, from 13 years on. You see a lot of disenfranchised people on Mission Voice, who feel like the place is being run by a bunch of old people who don’t care.
I talked about this with the school board: Why can’t we use the schools as community buildings when they are not in use as a school? From 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. every weekday, McMahon Elementary is empty. On the weekends, it’s empty. The kids can’t use the fields for soccer games on the weekend, because they’re school property. Why can’t they be used as community centres?
If elected, how would what you want to do as councillor be different from what council is already doing?
For the last nine years, I’ve been to pretty well-near every council meeting there has been. I’ve seen some very good councils, with good ideas, communicating well with the community. This last council has tuned out the community. They stopped listening the day they got elected.
I’ve always been proactive towards the community. I shake my head sometimes at things I see. You cannot have a council that doesn’t listen to the people. You can’t hide agendas. A good point is the downtown revitalization. All they’re saying is, “Look at what we’re doing for you. This will be so nice!” No one has looked at the downsides — what the cost is, and where the money is coming from. They’re not telling the community.
My first priority would be to hold council more accountable than it has been. The community needs to know what’s going on. If you know where the money is coming from for the downtown core project, and you’re not telling people, or when you have a fire inspector who is overloaded with work because a fire inspector was laid off to “save money” for the sake of keeping taxes down, the community needs to know.
To do this, we challenge the mayor. He’s the day-to-day person and controls how council works. We need a mayor who listens, and if he does what our current mayor has been doing, he needs a council that can say “No, this needs to go out.” We can’t have secrets, with tidbits here and tidbits there.
Do you have a specific project you want to prioritize or bylaw you want to change?
My first point is public safety. The current council is bragging about how they saved $800,000 on public safety. In my mind, you shouldn’t be bragging about that.
Where do those savings come from? From not hiring police officers, from turning a fire inspector into a bylaw officer. Yeah, you save lots of money, but is your community safe? Spending eight to 10 million dollars cleaning up downtown by planting trees and putting in fancy benches is not going to clean it up. It’s just going to make it a nicer place for the drug addicts down there.
You have to get rid of the drug problem. We have a strong social issue here — the same thing Abbotsford has with the homeless, Mission has with drug addicts. The drug dealers know where these people are, and prey on them. We need to get rid of that problem. I’ve never been afraid to live in Mission, and I’m not afraid myself of downtown Mission now, but I’ve seen things that should not be happening in any town.
The other day, I was walking by the museum, and between it and the Community Services building, there was drug paraphernalia everywhere. I found a bag laying on the ground, the size of a telephone. I picked up the bag, and inside was a battery pack, taped together. I zipped it back up, and put it back down on the ground. In less than three minutes, I see a guy come darting up the road, picking up the bag, and away he went. I know what that was. It was his stash. But the only thing the police can do is stop them if they see the dealer make a transaction with someone.
We also need to get a stage-two clearing house. We have a stage-one one on Logan Avenue, which allows people to stay inside from 30 days to one year; they have to be drug-free and alcohol-free. They can’t use on the grounds, but they can do their thing outside the house, and come back in high. A person doesn’t get off drugs until they want to. If a person gets to a point where they can get convinced that they are done with that, there are programs available in Mission that will help them detox. The problem is that they go to the detox place, and then they go back into the stage-one housing. It would be like me trying to lose weight, and spending my life living in a candy store.
In a stage-two house, you stay inside for six months, you take the detox program, and when you come out, you find employment opportunities — it’s a big step in getting these people back into society, and we don’t have that kind of support. Fraser Health won’t fund it. And council says, “Not our problem, it’s a provincial problem.” Maybe it is a province-wide problem, but it’s in our community, and we have to do something about it. We need to get these people off the street, and give them proper care. We have a place called Hope for Life down on Railway Avenue, and every Wednesday they have a meeting to help these people out. And every Wednesday, you’ll see the drug dealers there, too, waiting for them. We need to get rid of that problem.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
