The first day of school in Burnaby also marked the opening of the nomination period for the Oct. 20 election. Candidates for mayor, council and school board now have until Sept. 14 to put their name forward for public office.
Just in time for the unofficial start of the campaign, the Burnaby Civic Greens announced five new candidates (three for council and two for school board).
Joel Gibbs, Mehreen Chaudhry and Erika Schinzel will run for council seats. They join three previously announced Green council candidates: Joe Keithley, Rick McGowan and Carrie McLaren.
Twenty candidates have now declared their intentions to run for Burnaby city council.
All seven sitting councillors – Pietro Calendino, Nick Volkow, Paul McDonell, Dan Johnston, James Wang, Sav Dhaliwal and Colleen Jordan – are running for re-election under the Burnaby Citizens Association (BCA) banner, with school trustee Baljinder Narang hoping to make the jump to city hall and take the seat left vacant by now-MLA Anne Kang.
The Burnaby First Coalition has announced four council candidates: Charter Lau, Heather Leung, Linda Hancott and John Templeton. The party has said it will announce more candidates and will run a full slate on both council (eight) and school board (seven) as well as a mayoral candidate.
Two independents, Rudy Pospisil and Claire Preston, are also seeking council seats.
Independent mayoral candidate and former firefighter Mike Hurley is currently the only declared mayoral candidate seeking to unseat longtime incumbent Derek Corrigan of the BCA.
So far, only the BCA and Greens have announced school trustee candidates.
The BCA is running seven people, in a bid to sweep all local seats for a fourth time in a row. Incumbents Larry Hayes and Gary Wong will be joined by Suresh Bhayana, Bill Brassington, Peter Cech, Jen Yang Mezei and Ryan Stewart on the BCA ticket.
Christine Cunningham and Emily Zhang appear to be the only trustee candidates the local Green party plans to nominate.
