Monday, July 7, 2008

Mayoralty candidate apologizes for his team

Backrooms column by Dan Hilborn
Published Oct. 22, 2005


Something very strange happened during the Royal Oak neighbourhood's community forum on crime on Tuesday night, and I'm still trying to figure out exactly what implications it might carry for the upcoming civic election.

Team Burnaby mayoral candidate Andrew Stewart confirms that he apologized to his rival Derek Corrigan over some apparently inappropriate comments from at least one of his candidates and supporters or candidates of the other side.

"I was embarrassed," Stewart said Wednesday. "The honest efforts of someone trying to hold a forum suddenly had it flipped on them."

The incident started when Stewart, the managing director of Donn Dean Collision, one of the largest businesses in the neighbourhood, stood up to talk about his experience with the growing problem of crime in the area.

Stewart spoke about the time he called the RCMP after witnessing a thief walk off with a $12,000 pressure washer from a nearby business, and the police were unable to respond.

"We talked about that in a nice way. The crowd responded favourably, and Derek got up and gave a good response. I thought, geez, this is going swimmingly," Stewart said. "That's when one of our lads and some hecklers in the crowd started a big kafoofle."

While the nature of the 'incident' is unclear, it apparently had something to do with council's perceived inability to hire RCMP officers over the past decade.

"That's not the forum for that kind of thing," the Team candidate said. "That's not the way I want to run a campaign. I'm not that kind of person. If that's the kind of tack that person wants to take, they should do it an all-candidates meeting."

Stewart insists he is unable to describe the culprit because he sat at the front of the room, and "it was pretty loud in there."

Meanwhile, Team sent out a press release on Thursday to clarify its stance on the RCMP hiring at city hall.

While acknowledging that the RCMP 'hiring freeze' at city hall lasted for only six years, beginning in 1998, the paper calls for the hiring of a dozen officers per year, for a total of 36 new officers over the next three years.

MEETINGS SET

There may not be very many all-candidate meetings in Burnaby unless the teacher's strike comes to an end.

Three of the four proposed all-candidates meetings currently under discussion in the city are supposed to take place inside public school gymnasiums, forcing organizers to start looking for alternatives if the ongoing job action continues.

With the exception of a now-cancelled meeting on Monday night (see story page 14) all of the meetings we know about are listed below.

Tuesday, Nov. 1, the Burnaby Interagency Council will host an all- candidates' meeting with a focus on social issues at Edmonds community school gymnasium, 7651 18th Ave. The meeting begins at 5 p.m. with school board candidates, 6:30 p.m. for council candidates and 7:30 p.m. for mayor candidates. The meeting format is subject to change.

Tuesday, Nov. 9, the Heights Neighbourhood Association hope to have a candidate debate featuring full or partial slates and independents beginning at 6:45 p.m., in the gymnasium of Gilmore community school, 50 Gilmore Ave.

Wed., Nov. 9, the Capitol Hill community association hosts its traditional all-candidate meeting at its community hall, 7 p.m., 361 Howard St., at the crest of the hill on Hastings.

As stated, all of these meetings are subject to change.

SVEND RETURNS

Svend Robinson surprised few people this week when he announced his return to politics.

Canada's first openly gay member of Parliament, who represented Burnaby for 25 years, stepped aside last year after he was caught stealing a $50,000 wedding ring. After admitting he "snapped in this moment of total, utter irrationality," he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has now undergone treatment and now wants back into politics.

It's been an interesting year for Robinson. In addition to his medical treatment and al l the negative publicity garnered from his 'incident with the ring,' he received $10,000 compensation from the RCMP after being hit by a rubber bullet during the 2001 Summit of the Americas.

And while he currently works with the BCGEU in Burnaby, he does confirm that he will move to the west end if he wins the nomination - which should be about a relatively sure thing.

His intentions have been the source of much speculation for the past year. In fact, Svend and I spoke about his hope to return to politics last spring, when I gave him a ride home from the memorial service for former Burnaby city councillor Jim Young.

Although we only spoke for about ten minutes - the time it took to drive from Hastings Street to his current home near BCIT - it was obvious from his enthusiasm and the brouhaha has done little to tone down his otherwise flamboyant manner.

STRIKE THAT COMMENT

There was quite a mad scramble at city hall on last week, after the city's returning officer caught wind of a potential wildcat strike in support of B.C. teachers.

When Debbie Comis, the top election official at City Hall, first heard that CUPE local 23 was meeting to discuss possible job actions to assist the teachers, she quickly got on the phone to city's two major civic political parties to advise them their last opportunity to fix any problems with their nomination forms could in fact come a lot sooner then they expected.

If the city employees had staged a sympathy strike, as some of their number were urging, they could have shut down the hall on Friday, Oct. 14, the same day as the deadline to file nomination papers.

While Team Burnaby didn't have any concerns with its forms, the incumbent Burnaby Citizens Association had a minor kerfuffle in the making - all over the placement of the apostrophe in their party's formal name.

Apparently, some of the BCA candidates used an apostrophe on their forms, and others didn't, meaning that campaign officials had to decide which of the two possible spellings was actually going to be used on the official ballots.

Gordie Larkin, a BCA campaign official, admits he ran down to city hall to clear up the discrepancies, just prior to attending a meeting at the B.C. Federation of Labour headquarters on Boundary Road.

The forms were changed, the wildcat strike was averted, and Larkin made a decision that the Burnaby Citizens Association name will appear on the ballot without the apostrophe.

"It could have put me in an embarrassing situation," he admitted. "I'm not an English major you know."

And you'd think that after spending all the time with the teachers that something would have rubbed off, eh?

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