Dear Editor
Kudos to the Burnaby Board of Trade for talking face-to-face with its members to find out their issues to better represent their needs. This is a move that Burnaby mayor and councillors might try sometime.
The Board of Trade Business Sentiment Report indicates that housing for workers is an economic issue that is becoming more acute. When employees can’t find affordable housing, they can’t live in the community where they work. Often this results in critical worker shortages. We don’t want Burnaby to become one of those cities where its workers have to come in from the hinterlands, adding hours of commuting onto their day, yet there seems to be no planning to make Burnaby a whole community that can house its work population.
Rather than being proactive about planning and zoning, Burnaby is taking the neo-liberal path of “let the market rule.”
Further, unlike nearby cities, Burnaby has shown no leadership on becoming a Living Wage employer itself. New Westminster, and soon Vancouver and Port Coquitlam (along with Quesnel and Parksville), have committed to pay those who work for them a wage that is sufficient for them and their families to live on.
It would be great to live in a city that had less of a neo-liberal, and more of a socially minded, governing style.
Mae Burrows, Burnaby
