The Editor,
Re: Burnaby to scrap 90% of its public hearings (Dec. 15, 2023)
Burnaby council did not "have to" scrap public engagement on rezonings.
I recall Mike Hurley's response to former Mayor Derek Corrigan's repeated assertion that nothing council could do about Metrotown demovictions: "You have not even tried."
That was prior to the 2018 election.
It seems fair to react similarly to now Mayor Mike Hurley's statement that "we're forbidden from holding public hearings."
I assure the Mayor that nobody can forbid public engagement.
It is worth reminding the Mayor that his position today owes much to community leaders' presence at public hearings during the peak of Metrotown demovictions. These engagements paved the way for his successful 2018 campaign.
Mayor Mike Hurley fails to acknowledge that council certainly could have directed staff to establish an alternative engagement process before discarding public hearings altogether.
Instead, council swiftly embraced the undemocratic measures imposed by the provincial government at the very first opportunity, and, to add insult, expanded them to non-residential rezonings on industrial, commercial, and institutional lands, a move not mandated by the province.
The provincial government claims "lengthy delays" due to public hearings, but in Burnaby they usually take much less than an hour for council to listen and perhaps a day or two for staff to complete the standardized process.
They also claim that rezonings are already "litigated" in community plan debates, but this only shows a complete lack of understanding how public hearings are used.
The issues debated for site- and neighbourhood-specific rezonings clearly differ from those of community plans.
Single mothers plead with council that ill-conceived aspects of the Tenant Assistance Policy will render them homeless when demovicted from a rezoning site.
Mayor Hurley himself raised objections to "ridiculous" unit sizes in the wake of tenants repeatedly voicing livability concerns in inclusionary housing units.
People protested the city's practice to sell public land into the real estate capital market.
Countless other speakers and writers addressed social, architectural, environmental, infrastructure, and economic concerns. Public hearings were the sole means for regular citizens to publicly share their lived experiences with council and to advocate for change.
Without public hearings, there will be no public record of these concerns.
The province's direction to halt public hearings on rezonings does not imply that council has to scrap public engagement.
Mayor Mike Hurley may reflect on how he got elected and perhaps collaborate once again with SFU's Centre for Dialogue and community leaders to conceive of a more robust, inclusive, and public civic engagement process.
- Reinhard Schauer, Burnaby
