Candidates in place for Burnaby-New Westminster

By Dan Hilborn
Published March 10, 2004


The political landscape is taking shape in the new riding of Burnaby-New Westminster, where the candidates for the three major parties have now been formally selected.

Last weekend, the final two pieces of the puzzle were fitted into place for the riding that straddles 10th Avenue. The New Democrats will run former Council of Canadian executive director Peter Julian, while the Conservatives will run former candidate and lawyer Mike Redmond.

"The number 1 issue is health care," said Julian, a New Westminster native, who currently works as the executive director at the Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. "That is the top-of-mind issue for folks in the community and not just because of the closure of Saint Mary's Hospital."

Julian, who attended Douglas College before going to university in Ottawa and Montreal, has studied international relations and speaks French. He is the son of former Liberal party candidate and author Terry Julian.

Other issues of concern include statistics that point to most Canadians seeing a small decline or stagnation of their income over the past 10 years, and the growing poverty rates and amount of homelessness in Canada, Julian said.

"There are well over a million children living in poverty in Canada at the same time millions and billions of dollars are cascading out of the Liberal government. Something is fundamentally wrong, and I think the government of Paul Martin needs a strong message," Julian said. "I think people are looking to see a change in Ottawa, and they're not looking to the old-line parties to effect that change."

Specifically, Julian would like to see the powers of the auditor general increased so that office can track government spending from the moment the budget has been approved as a kind of "early warning system" over the government bureaucracy.

Julian defeated former NDP president David MacKinnon for the nomination at a meeting that had about 250 show up to vote. Veteran NDP MP Svend Robinson was the guest speaker.

Across town, the newly chosen Conservative candidate said his main concern is simply finishing the ongoing party leadership race and then getting the organization in place to fight an election.

"What we have to do is show the public that we have a team that can form government," said Redmond, who also ran for the Tories in 2000 against his new colleague Paul Forseth.

"It's fine to sit down and complain about everything, but eventually you have to come up with a plan, and I think the Conservatives have a good one."

Redmond, who lives in New Westminster and works in Richmond, said transportation is a huge issue in the riding. "It's symptomatic of a bigger problem with government," he said. "All the service problems are local, but all the money to address these problems is collected at the federal level. There has to be a way to rebalance that system."

Redmond also said the Canadian constitution reflects the fact that 80 per cent of the nation used to live on farms, while today that same percentage live in cities. And he would like to see the federal government loosen the rules for recent immigrants to use their overseas qualifications to find skilled work in Canada.

"We get a lot of people coming from mainland China with terrific qualifications such as engineers and doctors, but they don't work as that when they get here - they work at Future Shop instead," Redmond said. "That's a huge waste of human potential."

Redmond won the Conservative nomination on the second ballot after finishing behind realtor Sam Rakhra on the first count. Finishing third was Phil Eidsvik of the Fisheries Survival Coalition.

Julian and Redmond will run against Liberal candidate Mary Pynenburg, the director of planning at New Westminster city hall, who won her nomination over Burnaby councillor Lee Rankin.