A case for candidates closer to home

One positive thing that can be said for carpetbagging politicians is that they do at least get first-hand experience in the local housing market.

The term carpetbagger was coined after the American Civil War to describe northerners who packed their bags and went south to profit from reconstruction. It’s morphed into the word used for opportunistic politicians eager to represent someone, anyone. Suffice to say, it’s not a term of endearment.

Canadian elections have their share of them. This fall’s municipal elections are exceptional only because there may be more of them than in the past with so many races wide open due to a higher than usual number of Metro Vancouver mayors and councillors not seeking re-election.

And, none of those vacancies are higher profile than the mayor’s job in two of Canada’s largest cities, Vancouver and Surrey.

With a thousand people a month moving there, Surrey holds plenty of untapped potential and it’s got Langley-East backbencher Rich Coleman kicking the tires. Of course, he’s got more than just the baggage of not living there.

Coleman was the minister in charge of B.C. Lotteries Corp. during the height of the money laundering and, for years, was the minister in charge of doing something about the housing crisis.

Vision Vancouver’s mayoral candidate Ian Campbell is still looking for a home in the city, a spokesperson confirmed last week. He and his family live in North Vancouver. But six generations back, the Squamish hereditary chief ’s Khatsahlano family lived in and gave their name to the area now called Kitsilano.

So, Campbell can quite rightly lay claim to a much longer history here than most of us as can.

As can Wade Grant, who is hoping to be one of the Non-Partisan Association’s council candidates. A former Musqueam band councillor and member of the Vancouver Police Board, Grant lives on the reserve in south Vancouver.

Kennedy Stewart is a more traditional political vagabond. One of Vancouver’s seven mayoral candidates, he plans to resign as the federal New Democratic Party member of Parliament for Burnaby South, where he’d moved after running unsuccessfully in Vancouver Centre in the 2004 federal election. Stewart lived in Burnaby in 2011 when he first ran successfully, in Burnaby Douglas. He won again in 2015 in the new Burnaby South riding, but when he’s not in Ottawa, Stewart says he and his wife have been living in Vancouver for the past three years.

Just as British Columbia’s municipal election rules don’t require candidates, mayor or councillors to live in their communities, the federal rules don’t either. Federally, any person qualified as an elector may run for election. They must be a Canadian citizen aged 18 or older on election day. They may seek election in only one electoral district at a time; however, they need not reside in that district.

Because of that, there’s plenty of speculation that Stewart is clearing out to make way for the federal New Democrats’ seatless leader, Jagmeet Singh.

The B.C. Election Act is slightly more restrictive. Candidates have to have lived in the province for at least six months immediately before becoming a candidate.

Still, eyebrows were raised during the 2017 provincial election when it was reported not a single candidate in the Kamloops-North Thompson riding had a home there and that, province-wide, one in four candidates didn’t live where they were running.

So if it’s not OK to run for office in British Columbia if you don’t live here, shouldn’t that be the same for municipal politics?

Arguments have been made that there are some municipalities so thinly populated that they can’t find enough candidates to run. And, heaven knows, these often part-time and poorly remunerated jobs are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth.

But that’s not the case in Vancouver and Surrey. The mayors are paid $165,700 and $132,470 respectively with Surrey’s mayor getting another $15,855 in taxable benefits. Both also sit on the Metro Vancouver board, where if they’re elected chair, they earn another $77,474 a year.

To put that into context, Vancouver’s median household income is $65,327, while the median income for single men is $38,884 and $29,835 for women.

Still, it’s mystifying to me that non-residents consider themselves qualified to run in communities where they don’t pay taxes or have emotional ties. Their decisions impact everything from the very essentials of daily life — water, fire, police, sewers — to our ability to live there.

In B.C. cities, it takes only six of 11 council members to decide how much to raise property taxes, whether to rezone single-family neighbourhoods out of existence, to preserve heritage communities or destroy them, or whether to tip the balance in favour of citizens over developers.

Outsiders can bring a different perspective and even special skills. But they’re not running for city manager or director of planning. They’re like jurors. Their job is to weigh the options provided by staff and put it through the lens of what is best for the community.

It would make sense to bring the Municipal Election Act in line with the provincial election act and require that at least some time be spent in a community before a person runs to represent it.

Meantime, there’s a simple solution. Vote.

If you think candidates’ qualifications are more important than their home addresses, great. But if you don’t want to have to leave town to talk to the mayor or a councillor, don’t put an X by their names.