They did it again. The Burnaby Citizens Association took all seats in the 2011 civic election; mayor, school board and council.
"Nobody believed it could be done twice," said mayor Derek Corrigan, addressing a crowd of about 150 people at the BCA election night party. "We once again swept all of the seats, and it was because of you."
Corrigan is now about to start his fourth term as mayor, but he's been on council since 1987. In the 2008 civic election, the BCA took all the council and school board seats and ran the city unopposed and will do so for another three years.
On council, all eight incumbents reclaimed their seats: Pietro Calendino, Dan Johnston, Anne Kang, Colleen Jordan, Richard Chang, Sav Dhaliwal, Paul McDonell and Nick Volkow. Corrigan won with about three-quarters of the votes. On school board, all five incumbents won their seats back, along with two BCA newcomer trustees: Meiling Chia and Harman Pandher.
Corrigan said winning all of the seats in the city twice in row was very, very special.
"I've never heard of it happening before, I've never heard of someone doing it Canadian government before," he said. "It really is the results of the people in Burnaby having a great deal of faith in our government."
Corrigan noted that the school trustee candidates had a tough time this election, referring to the campaigning from Burnaby Parents' Voice, a group that formed in opposition to the school board's anti-homophobia policy. (They ran five trustee candidates and garnered 14.5 per cent of the vote. TEAM Burnaby trustee hopefuls secured 22.9 per cent.)
"The voters have made it perfectly clear that they won't entertain the type of politics Parents' Voice was attempting to initiate," he said. "I think the voters have had their say on the issue. I don't think there's any place in this community for intolerance."
Corrigan gave TEAM Burnaby, his main opposition, kudos for trying. TEAM Burnaby was expecting to fare better this election with more unified support, but the party's council candidates secured only 30.5 per cent of the vote while BCA took 60.3.
"I congratulate them for running," Corrigan said. "It's hard for people to put their name up for office, and it's extremely difficult when they have no success, and this is two elections that they've had no success. It's difficult to keep people together under those circumstances, and I'm surprised they were able to unite for this election I give them credit for that, but I don't think their message is being bought by the people of Burnaby."
School board chair Larry Hayes was pleased with BCA's second full sweep.
"One word comes to mind: Wow," Hayes said. As for whether Parents' Voice was a threat, Hayes said you can't take anyone lightly in an election.
"But certainly it was my hope and feeling that reasonableness in the community would prevail," he said. "We don't think we did anything wrong, but there is always room for improvement."
Hayes said there were a lot of issues manufactured with Parents' Voice.
"Every time representatives opened their mouths, there was misinformation being spread, there was fear being spread, there were a lot of things I think some people should be very ashamed of in how they conducted themselves in this campaign," he said.
Hayes is still school board chair until the board's inaugural meeting on Dec. 6, and he said he would like to continue with the position.
NOTE: Preliminary figures in this story were updated on Tuesday, Nov. 22 at 10 a.m.
