A seismic shift could be in the works for city politics in Burnaby.
The NOW has learned a new coalition has formed to take on the Burnaby Citizens Association juggernaut in November’s civic elections.
Calling itself the Burnaby First Coalition, the new entity is a diverse alliance of former Green, Burnaby Parents’ Voice and TEAM Burnaby faithful, as well as politicos from other levels of government.
“I would say there’s provincial Liberals, there’s probably federal Liberals and there might even be another party or two in there, but it’s not about politics,” said Burnaby First Coalition Society president Daren Hancott, himself a hopeful for the Conservative nomination in the federal riding of Burnaby North-Seymour. “It’s about representation of the city. I think this group will better represent the city than the current group, let’s put it that way.”
Besides Hancott, the new coalition’s board includes former independent council candidate Nick Kvenich, former Green provincial and municipal candidate Carrie McLaren, former Burnaby Parents’ Voice spokesperson Heather Leung and local builder-developer Shakila Jeyachandran.
“It’s a very interesting group,” Hancott said with a laugh. “There’s a lot of politics involved, there’s a lot of different levels of politics and there’s a lot of interesting people with no political experience.”
The group has been meeting since last August and is putting the finishing touches on its council platform after recently hammering out its school board program, which will focus on economics, according to Green party activist and Burnaby First “volunteer-in-chief” Bruce Friesen.
Candidates will be announced in a few weeks, once the coalition's guiding principles are in place.
“In order to put a formal and coherent group together, you have to first have ideas, rather than personalities,” Friesen said.
By November, the coalition hopes to have candidates in place that are representative of Burnaby’s diverse population, which mean working through significant ideological differences within the group.
“Because they are a true team, there isn’t one person waving the baton,” Friesen said of the new coalition.
“We don’t have a (Mayor) Derek Corrigan. We don’t have somebody who’s trying to say, ‘It’s my way. I’ll make the decisions, and people will either like it or lump it.’”
The end goal is to get more diversity on council, according to McLaren even if that means Greens teaming up with former members of Burnaby Parents’ Voice, a party created out of a group that opposed the Burnaby school district’s anti-homophobia policy and often labeled “anti-gay.”
“We are joining forces on only those issues which we all have in common, and that’s what coalitions do,” McLaren told the Burnaby NOW. “We all agree on having an open council, having actual debate and that we are representative of many different groups.”
That’s not the case now in what McLaren describes as the Burnaby Citizens Association’s “monopoly” on council, school board and the parks, recreation and culture commission.
“Every time we were campaigning, we always heard people say, ‘Why is there not one united opposition?’ So that’s what we’re trying to do,” McLaren said.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter, @CorNaylor
