I want everyone in this community to prosper; I want us to be happy, healthy, and living our best lives. People in this community are only just getting by, they aren’t prospering. We need to be spending more time with our families and friends, not working full-time with a side gig just to make ends meet.

We are stressing about paying our bills, wasting hours going to and from work by transit or stuck in rush hour traffic, trying to find affordable child-care for our children, wondering if we can even afford to have children, if we are going to be evicted so that our landlord can raise the rent after slapping on some new paint or if the city is going to tear down our home so that luxury condos can be built and real-estate investors can park their money somewhere. This is not the life I want for the people in my community… for you.

Demovictions

Demovictions infuriate me. It angers and frustrates me that families and seniors in our community have been repeatedly forced out of their apartments that they could barely afford into apartments that they can’t afford. It doesn’t have to be this way. We have other options.
This issue, beyond all others, is what convinced me that I had to run for city council. The solutions exist, we need a voice on council to champion them.

This council has repeatedly claimed there is nothing they can do for the residents of Metrotown.  They ignore the pleas of those who’ve been evicted from their homes and double-crossed by the developers. They’ve turned a blind eye to the luxury condos being built so investors can store their money.

It’s simply not true that council can’t act. The truth is that they won’t act.
The people of Burnaby – our neighbours – the families and seniors who have been displaced deserve better than this. We deserve a council that will act to protect our residents and their homes.

If demovictions make you as angry as they make me, click here to add your voice to my campaign.

Affordable Housing

If I had to move tomorrow I wouldn’t be able to stay in Burnaby. Like many others, I am already at the maximum I can afford in rent. And if I want to start a family or if I had to take care of a sick family member, I would have to move completely outside of Metro Vancouver to find a place I could afford.

Regular families and seniors are continuously being priced out of Burnaby, and things won’t change if we continue down the path that city council has set for us; we are losing the young families that make our communities actual communities. What’s the point of the council spending all that money on these beautiful parks and community spaces if there are no children to use them?

We need to work together with the province to create affordable housing that will keep people in Burnaby and address climate change.

If having affordable housing in Burnaby is important to you, click here to add your voice to my campaign.

Environment

In a lot of ways, Burnaby has been a leader in Metro Vancouver on environmental initiatives, but more needs to be done if we want to create a city that is a world leader on environmental issues.

The Kinder Morgan pipeline has been delayed. If you elect me to city council I promise you that I will continue the fight against pipelines to protect our coasts and protect us from further climate change.

Green Initiatives

Some of the key initiatives that I would like to start as a city councillor are:

• Bike-sharing
• More dedicated funding to removing invasive species
• Requiring that only indigenous plants be installed on public/city land, with limited exceptions for dedicated ornamental beds and gardens
• Incentives for people and businesses to retrofit older buildings with hook-ups for electric vehicles (EV)
• All municipal parking lots to have EV stalls 50%
• All new buildings should have renewable energy generators (wind, solar, or other) included in their design
• Incentivise a more complete use of all space, including features like roof-top farming and vertical forests
• Improving infrastructure to account for future climate change

Growing the local economy

Urban planning

We need to make our communities more people-centric; people need to be able to live close to where they work. Rezoning so that the city is more people-centric, means that people could walk or bike almost anywhere they would want to go and trading in our current large residential only neighbourhoods that are only accessible by car or bus for more mixed commercial and residential areas and buildings. This would increase the need for, and use of, small to medium local businesses.

Living Wages

I believe in a living wage, anyone who is working should be able to comfortably support themselves and anyone working full-time should be able to support themselves and a dependant. Current calculations show that the living wage in Metro Vancouver is approximately $21/hr. I would table legislation to raise the minimum-wage for all municipal employees to living wage and tie the municipal minimum wage to inflation.