Burnaby MLA Corrigan says she won’t run in upcoming election
Wife of city’s mayor says decision doesn’t mean he is also retiring
One half of Burnaby’s NDP power couple has decided to retire, opening her provincial riding for a new MLA in next year’s election.
Kathy Corrigan, the two-term MLA for Burnaby-Deer Lake, said Friday she’s decided to leave provincial politics rather than run for re-election on May 9, 2017. The 62-year-old said the decision was based partly on problems with her back, the frequency of travel to Victoria and the time away from her husband, Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan.
“When you are an MLA, you don’t make a decision a year at a time, you have to make decisions in chunks of four years,” she said Friday in an interview. “As much as I’d love to be with John (Horgan) when we win in 2017, and I have a great deal of faith in him and my colleagues, I just thought it’s time for me to retire.”
She said the move doesn’t necessarily foreshadow her husband’s departure from the mayor’s office in 2018.
“I don’t think Derek is ever going to retire,” she said, chuckling at her husband’s 28 years of service on Burnaby council, including five terms as mayor. “So no, it’s not in preparation of me retiring and he later.”
Corrigan is a lawyer and a former Burnaby school board chairwoman. She said she wanted to give her riding, and party leader Horgan, ample time to find a replacement.
“With the election a year out, it’s a good time to start having nomination races,” she said. “You want to start getting potential candidates out there.”
Corrigan won the riding by fewer than 1,000 votes or five per cent of the popular vote in 2013.
Provincial MLAs who are leav- ing politics have begun to tell their party leaders of their decision.
Don McRae, the Comox Valley Liberal MLA and a former education minister, also announced this week he intends to return to his career as a high-school teacher.
“I think everybody is allowed to have their own timeline,” McRae said this week.
“I think there’s an expectation you won’t wait until the last minute to tell the premier.”
The only other MLA to officially declare retirement has been Peace River North’s Pat Pimm. However, numerous MLAs on both sides of the house are believed to have already made their decisions, but are waiting to make announcements in concert with their leaders.
Cabinet ministers by tradition usually only tell the premier their decision and then wait until she makes a pre-election cabinet shuffle (usually in the fall) before announcing their retirement.
The governing Liberal party is expecting attrition more in line with the 13 Liberal MLAs who chose not to run again in 2009, rather than the larger exodus of almost half the caucus, and several senior cabinet ministers before the 2013 election when the party appeared destined to lose the election.
On the NDP side, Horgan’s office said the timing is up to MLAs.