Editor: Re: Shouting at council doesn’t serve your cause, Now opinion, June 6
“Show a little decorum… and stay calm,” you demand. It’s just painfully hard to see your neighbours demovicted from long-term viable rental buildings in their late 40s, only because of the insatiable greed of a few, while all along their elected politicians keep mum.
The silence of the Metrotowners’ political representatives appears at least as disrespectful as the lack of “decorum” of passionate community members during a rezoning hearing that put another 211 affordable market rental units on the chopping block to make space for condo towers. Reality is not one politician who calls Metrotowners their constituents has chosen to speak out on behalf of the demographic of renters that the Metrotown Downtown Plan throws under the bus – not the mayor, not one councillor, not MLA Anne Kang, and not MP Kennedy Stewart. In fact, some councillors have not even expressed an opinion about that Metrotown Downtown Plan they unanimously passed. While all vow to serve the social-minded NDP platform, in reality they silence out the most concentrated gentrification program in modern-day history of British Columbia.
Perhaps those who shouted at council during the public hearing on May 29 felt disenfranchised of their right to be heard properly. Hearing after hearing they see the public good of zoning distributed to land developers at the sole discretion of Burnaby’s city council. Indeed, those hearings start to feel like the same sham that characterized city planning’s public consulting of the Metrotown Downtown Plan, which was only designed to enable them to say they are listening. What can Metrotowners do at this point? Go to the Supreme Court and demand their voices be heard through proper representation? Threaten to step in front of the bulldozers and get arrested as the mayor does when he feels disenfranchised? Metrotowners do not have that luxury.
Reinhard Schauer, Burnaby
