Skip to content

Burnaby-Deer Lake candidates come out firing

Burnaby Interagency Council hosts all-candidates meeting on housing and child care, minus Liberal hopeful
Burnaby-Deer Lake all-candidates meeting
B.C. Green candidate Rick McGowan (at microphone) speaks at the all-candidates meeting on Tuesday night. Also seen are NDP candidate Anne Kang, independent candidate Elias Ishak, and the empty chair belonging to Liberal candidate Karen Wang.

The Greens blamed the NDP. The NDP blamed the Liberals. And the Liberals didn’t blame anybody because, well, they weren’t there.

If you missed the Burnaby Interagency Council’s all-candidates meeting for Burnaby-Deer Lake on Tuesday night, that was pretty much the political message in a nutshell.

The meeting, held at Bonsor Recreation Centre, attracted about 40 people to hear the candidates’ views on issues related to housing and child care – one of a series of four meetings planned by the interagency council on issues related to poverty and food security.

Independent candidate Elias Ishak, NDP candidate Anne Kang and Green candidate Rick McGowan all attended.

Liberal Karen Wang was absent – a fact that Kang noted early, and often. She took her first shot at the Liberals in her introductory remarks, opening fire with: “They have always been missing in action, not just at all-candidates meetings but on all fronts.”

Kang took several opportunities to remind the audience that Premier Christy Clark’s Liberals have been in power for 16 years, and Kang said life has gotten worse for British Columbians over that time.

“We can’t afford another four years of B.C. Liberals,” she said.

It was a theme she returned to in response to a series of questions about poverty reduction, food security, rental vacancy rates, child care and homelessness, among others.

On child care, for one, she noted that she’s heard concern from residents on doorsteps about affordability, and she was quick to add: “It is because of the 16 years of neglect of B.C. Liberals.”

On questions of rental affordability, she also took shots at the Liberals’ “underfunding” of the Residential Tenancy Branch and the province’s failure to step up to the plate on the issue of affordable housing. She also reminded audience members of the NDP’s pledge to create 114,000 units of affordable housing.

McGowan, meanwhile, used much of his time to hold Kang’s feet to the fire over the record of the NDP-affiliated Burnaby Citizens Association, which holds all the seats on Burnaby city council and of which Kang is a member.

McGowan said city council could have taken many steps to help the issue of affordable housing, such as putting a moratorium on demolitions of affordable housing, mandating a certain percentage of units for affordable housing and providing land for affordable housing projects. He repeatedly took the BCA to task for its “wrongheaded” decisions about housing and development, particularly in the Metrotown area, where demovictions have dominated the headlines.

“She goes along with these wrongheaded decisions,” he said of Kang.

He agreed with Kang that the Residential Tenancy Branch is underfunded but said that’s not the issue.

“You should not be tearing down the affordable housing that you have in the first place,” he said. “People are being kicked out of their places because they’re being torn down.”

Both McGowan and Ishak also took shots at the NDP for accepting donations from developers and unions.

Ishak, meanwhile, largely charted his own course for the meeting, repeatedly returning to his theme of creating “B.C. dollars” – a new currency for British Columbia that would not be subject to inflation and the vagaries of the monetary system but that could be used to provide subsidies for any number of projects and causes.