Retired firefighter Hurley takes top job on rise of renter anger
The Burnaby Citizens Association’s stranglehold on city council was broken Saturday as Mike Hurley, a retired Burnaby Fire Department captain, upset longtime incumbent mayor Derek Corrigan.
The Green party also put a member on council.
Former punk rocker Joe Keithley, who dropped his mayoral candidacy to back Hurley and run for council instead, was in eighth spot. The other seven council spots were won by the Burnaby Citizens Association, which means they still hold a majority on council.
Both Hurley and Keithley rode a wave of dissatisfaction with housing affordability. That was particularly so over the hundreds of so-called demovictions in the Metrotown area, where two- and three-storey walk-ups that rented at relatively low prices have been demolished to make way for muchmore-expensive condo towers.
Hurley called for a moratorium on any not-yet-approved developments that would displace renters until a plan to deal with the displacement is in place.
Hurley won by nearly 6,000 votes with 26,260 votes, a decisive win over Corrigan, who had served on council for 31 years, 16 of those as mayor.
“It’s the greatest honour to represent the residents of Burnaby, and to have them put their trust in me is just incredible, but I have to give congratulations to my whole team here that did so much work,” Hurley said at a celebration at the Firefighters Public House in Burnaby.
“We’re going to deliver change, first of all, by really listening to the citizens of Burnaby. There were a lot of upset people throughout the city about how the residents of Metrotown (in rental buildings) were thrown out of their homes and had to move on to other cities, and left our city. So that’s the issue we have to get to work on right away, to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Once the result was official, Corrigan gave a short speech at the Burnaby Winter Club and left to congratulate Hurley personally.
Burnaby Citizens Association councillor Pietro Calendino, who easily won re-election, said it was a shock to see Corrigan defeated.
He believed it was because, as mayor, Corrigan was closely identified with the Metrotown plan.
It was clear that the key issue in the election was housing affordability: 40 per cent had identified it as their No. 1 issue in a poll a week before the election.
Between 2010 and 2017, the city had a net loss of more than 700 rental units, a period when other Metro Vancouver municipalities gained hundreds, according to figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Critics, including Corrigan’s political foes, accused him and his party of not doing enough to tackle the issue. Corrigan continued to point the blame at the B.C. and federal governments, and had promised that Burnaby will be the first city in B.C. to take advantage of new rental zoning powers put in place by NDP government, who defeated the Liberals in 2017.
In New Westminster, popular incumbent Jonathan Cote easily kept his seat as mayor with more than 70 per cent of votes.
The young mayor and his Team Cote, made up of six city council and five school board candidates, were all elected.