Re: Wait for implosion, Letters to the editor, Burnaby NOW, Sept. 3.
I write to you in my capacity as president of the Burnaby Municipal Greens. In this role I countersigned nomination papers for our 2011 slate. I also donated $15,000 to ensure that brochures were distributed and advertising was printed in the NOW. (These actions are in the public record.)
In throwing labels about Mr. Melnyk also labels himself: as "not credible." He states: "in past elections I would always vote for a couple of the Green candidates." Perhaps he does not realize that the 2011 Burnaby Municipal Greens slate is the only one we have run (so how could he give us repeated support in "past elections"?)
Mr. Melnyk may also not realize that Ms. Carr cannot distance anyone from the B.C. Green Party when she speaks - having left the leadership a decade ago. Or does he also believe that past premier Mike Harcourt still speaks for the NDP? (A point NDP leader John Horgan, if no one else, would surely dispute!)
Be this as it may.
I also write to you in my capacity as campaign chair for the Burnaby First Coalition. In this role I now attempt to help a self-described Green supporter unpeel the "not credible" label he slaps on his own forehead.
I think that a fellow Green would agree with me that there is a sharp difference between green and green-washing actions by an incumbent politician. Green actions are pragmatic and measurable: for example promoting socially sustainable, economically rational, and pollution-reducing local development.
Green-washing actions are ideological and histrionic: calculated efforts to appear green in the media for electoral purposes in fear that prior actions promoting unsustainable local development have left "brown" stains on a public record.
I also think that a fellow local green such as Mr. Melynk would agree with me that Burnaby's current mayor has many "brown" stains on his record to hide.
I cite three below.
* The endless proliferation of condo towers along the Lougheed Highway - at Brentwood Mall - sited apparently without thought for further traffic congestion pumping untold additional tonnes of vehicle exhaust into Willingdon Heights.
* Bungled Burnaby Lake dredging - millions of dollars wasted due to his failure to authorize (until the last moment) proper tracking studies of endangered Western painted turtles living in the lake - leaving the contractor's barge sitting idle at lakeside for months at $100,000 per five-day working week.
* And, as recently as several weeks ago, endangering the hard work of Stoney Creek streamkeepers by allowing Burnaby's planning department to include in a redevelopment plan a storm-water outfall pipe emptying just upstream from a new salmon-spawning channel (leaving streamkeepers to seek "greener" action at the public hearing for that redevelopment).
I close by noting that individual municipal Greens work pragmatically with other members in the Burnaby First Coalition to get green thinking implemented at city hall. How could we not given the current spectacle of brown BCA incumbents like Mayor Corrigan furiously "green-washing" their otherwise brown actions in public. To paraphrase Forrest Gump: "Brown is as brown does." And green-washing at this late date doesn't help.
Mr. Melynk could go a long way to peeling that "not credible" label off his forehead by acknowledging this truth in his next letter.
G. Bruce Friesen is the president of the Burnaby Municipal Greens and the campaign chair for the Burnaby First Coalition.
