Are the Burnaby firefighters like the proverbial canary in the mine for Burnaby city council?
In Wednesday’s paper we ran a story about the Burnaby Citizens’ Association losing support from its stalwart allies. The firefighters are known to support the NDP, because the NDP supports labour. And the BCA is essentially a municipal NDP party. You can’t be a member of the BCA unless you are a member of the NDP. The relationship between the firefighters and city goes back a long time. In fact the alliance between the Burnaby firefighters and the BCA was sanctified when the former Burnaby fire chief Bill Copeland ran for mayor under the BCA banner and held that seat from 1987 to 1996.
The firefighters were part of the ‘in’ political crowd in Burnaby for a long time. And some might say they pretty much got what they asked for from the city in exchange for some very strong support.
But then things went sour in the relationship when the city refused to give the firefighters what they wanted in the last bargaining round. In fact, the city and the union are going to arbitration to see if they can settle and finally achieve a new collective agreement.
But the firefighters are also reflecting an increasing criticism of city council’s values: No help for the homeless, the low-income renters, the folks dependent on daycare – all reliable NDP bedrock policies being pushed to the side. The reason, which comes from Mayor Derek Corrigan all the time, is simple – those are provincial or federal responsibilities - not the city’s. He suggests that disappointed BCA members have unreasonable expectations for Burnaby council because the NDP have not been able to achieve governments either provincially or federally. He might be correct. Perhaps they are all looking for someone to hold up the NDP principles and the only visible representative is Burnaby’s political leaders. Leaders who, by the way, hold all the seats on both city council and the school board.
But no matter how many times Corrigan tries to redirect people’s frustrations to other levels of government, the question still remains: If you’re not going to try and help people hurting in your own community - no matter the source of the injustice - exactly why do you run under an NDP banner? Perhaps the banner at least needs a qualifying slogan, like: “We really like all of those high-falutin’ NDP principles, but we can’t do anything unless all other levels of government are NDP too. So come back and see us later. And, by the way, we’re going to build one heck of a downtown business area – not to be confused with one of those Liberal downtown business areas. No siree …”
