Charges fly at Cap Hill election meet

By Dan Hilborn
Published Nov. 12, 2005


Lies, mistruths and all kinds of heckling.

Those were the recurring themes of the most boisterous all-candidates meetings of the civic election campaign when approximately 150 people came to the Capitol Hill community hall to hear the verbal sparring between the Burnaby Citizens' Association and Team Burnaby on Wednesday night.

"Their strategy is to lie, lie big and to repeat that lie as often as you can," BCA Mayor Derek Corrigan said of his opponents in his opening statements of the two-hour meeting.

And while both sides were called on the carpet for alleged misstatements, the topics that sparked the greatest interest from the audience were conflicting claims on crime and taxes.

Among the most boisterous exchanges came over Team allegations that there has been a 52 per cent "tax increase" over the past 10 years. Several members of the audience held up their tax notices to prove their property tax hikes were closer to two per cent per year.

"Why put out such misinformation that can be proved to be false?" asked one senior resident, who noted his property tax bill rose only 16.92 per cent over the decade in question.

Team candidate Mark Hilford, a lawyer with a degree in commerce, confirmed that it was city revenues that increased 52 per cent over the previous decade, but added, "It's part and parcel of the same thing."

When the topic arose a second time, Hilford questioned why the city had any tax increases at all when its reserve funds had grown to more than $430 million.

"Taxes are going up like clockwork by three or four per cent," Hilford said. "Why pay higher and higher taxes while you watch the reserves grow and grow. It's grown $200 million in the past five years.

"Do we need it to grow another $200 million over the next five years?" Hilford asked.

"Yes," replied mayor Corrigan before BCA Coun. Dan Johnston, chair of the city finance committee, cautioned voters against spending the reserve funds.

Johnston noted that the majority of the reserve funds are set aside for capital improvement projects and cannot be spent on operating expenses such as staff salaries or day-to-day costs.

Former MLA and current BCA Coun. Pietro Calendino, pointed to the city's parks, libraries and sports fields, and said it is the reserve funds that help keep the city's facilities in good condition. Calendino also cited a study published in Alberta that said Burnaby had among the lowest tax increases of 24 major cities in Canada, including the lowest tax increases in B.C.

But the BCA was also chastised for some discrepancies of its own, and Mayor Corrigan was hit in particular for his claim that the RCMP training facility was "closed down" for two years in the late 1990s.

Hilford said he phoned the RCMP training facility and "the guy who answered the phone was quite surprised to hear that they were closed for two years. He said he'd worked there for 17 years."

Corrigan said Burnaby tried repeatedly to hire officers in the late 1990s but was told, including by Burnaby's own RCMP detachment superintendent, that it was not possible. Corrigan also noted that Surrey mayor Doug McCallum tried to hire 65 new officers during that same period but those officers were not forthcoming.

"We did not play politics by ordering officers that we could not get," Corrigan said. "I take the advice of the superintendent of the RCMP."

There was also a noticeable hush over the room when one member of the audience held up the new Team Burnaby flyer that claims in bright two-centimetre-tall letters that council held a "vote" on an RCMP hiring freeze.

"Did you vote for a hiring freeze?" asked the unnamed man.

"No," "no," "no," and "no," came the separate answers from three BCA councillors and former BVNPA candidate Nancy Harris, who is now running as an independent.

"No, but we didn't increase the RCMP budget either," said Team candidate Gary Begin, who served on city council from 1999 to 2002.

Equally divisive, but without the allegations of lying, were the two parties' responses to the provincial government's proposed Gateway plan that could see a twinning of the Port Mann bridge.

Corrigan said the plan will only increase traffic congestion in Burnaby, but noted the proposal could falter if the current mayor of Surrey loses his re-election bid.

Team gave only qualified support to the Gateway plan, and mayoral candidate Andrew Stewart said he would look at traffic-calming measures for the neighbourhoods and the proposal to build a cut-and- cover Stormont connector.

Team hopeful Garth Evans, the lone candidate from either side to bring his entire family to the meeting, said that he supports slowing down rat runners in local neighbourhoods and better rapid transit across the region.

BCA councillor Nick Volkow pointed to the congestion on the Barnet Highway, which was widened several years ago under a plan called a 'people moving project,' as evidence that wider highways do not always achieve the desired results. "They're not moving very fast between 6 and 9 in the morning anymore," he said.

On the issue of poverty, Stewart pointed to Team's plan to spend $400,000 to locate a homeless shelter in the city and to double city funding for social service agencies.