canspice.org

The New Westminster civic election is over. Now it’s time for all of the candidates to pick up their signs and… do what with them? Here are some ideas:

1. Use them as toboggans in the winter.

2. Use them as skimboards in the summer.

3. Get a boat. Stitch together enough signs to make sails. Practice sailing up and down the Fraser River in preparation for the invasions of Coquitlam and Richmond.

4. Throw them into traffic.

5. Wallpaper your rooms with them.

6. Make a kayak. You could be a valuable member of the New Westminster Navy.

7. Cheap frisbees. Okay, maybe not that cheap, I hear those signs are expensive. And they’re kind of heavy, and not all that easy to catch. Maybe this is a bad idea.

8. Paint over them with a new sign.

9. Store them so you can use them in the next election!

Michael Ewen is running for School Trustee in New Westminster, and he answered my questions. Thank you for answering!

Obviously, this is all satire. And I apologize for making a complete hash of the graphics. If they don’t turn out or look stretched or garbled, that’s all my fault. I didn’t get excellent Photoshop training like they get in forward-thinking New Westminster’s School District 40. Wait, what? They don’t get excellent Photoshop training in SD40? What kind of backwards School District are they running here? Geeze.

The biggest issue in this year’s election is undoubtedly the replacement of New Westminster Secondary School, an issue that has been going on for at least a decade. Every legitimate candidate (sorry, Jim Bell) is on board with getting the rebuild started quickly. When you run for re-election in 2018, what promises will you make to convince voters that the NWSS rebuild will start in 2019?

Michael Ewen: I reject the premise in your question. I understand that Mayo Crusty has pledged to have the new high school built in the next year, and that it will be built over his dead body. I will therefore move that we set aside a portion of the school property to be named after him, in honour of his miraculous feat of building the most complicated secondary school in provincial history in no time at all. And if you can’t trust a Mayo (or a Mayo candidate), then who can you trust?

There was some recent discussion on Twitter about entering discussions with Richmond towards building a high school in Queensborough that will also take students from the Hamilton district of eastern Richmond. Two part question here: As school trustee, what will you do to ensure that New Westminster students at this Queensborough high school are reminded daily that they are better than their Richmond counterparts, and will you join forces with the pro-expansion council to annex Hamilton and make it part of New Westminster?

Michael Ewen: Once again I must reject the premise of your question. The New Westminster School Board has been in talks for months and once we get this silly election out of the way we will be announcing that we have annexed all of Richmond. Our agreement with Richmond allows each Richmond trustee to have one vote each at New Westminster School Board meetings, while real New Westminster trustees will have votes based on their New Westminster pedigree. One vote for every generation that they have lived in the Royal City, plus bonus votes for Trustees who have served over 30 years.

One of your fellow school trustee candidates asked why three schools (NWSS, Fraser River Middle, and Qayqayt Elementary) are being built instead of just one. That’s an excellent question. Why not one school? In fact, why not tear down all of our schools and take over the Anvil Centre as “New Westminster School”?

Michael Ewen: The Anvil Centre is clearly too fancy a location for a school. The Ministry of Education requires that all schools look like a boring box, with little in the way of windows to distract our learners. I think that the School Board should be starting talks immediately to take over every empty warehouse in the city and transfer our schools into them.

What is your favourite New Westminster school and why is it Urban Academy?

Urban Academy is not an appropriate name for a school in New Westminster, therefore it cannot be a favourite school. All New Westminster schools need to have either boring geographic names, the name of a queen or the name of an obscure white guy (who most likely was racist at some point in his life). My real favourite New Westminster schools are, in no particular order (and no QE is not my real favourite just because my wife teaches there and where there are always blue skies):

• Queen Elizabeth Elementary
• Connaught Heights Elementary
• École Glenbrook Middle School
• F.W. Howay Elementary
• École Fraser River Middle School
• Herbert Spencer Elementary
• Queensborough Middle School
• Lord Kelvin Elementary
• New Westminster Secondary School
• Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary
• École Qayqayt Elementary
• New Westminster Homelearners Program
• Richard McBride Elementary
• POWER
• SIGMA
• RCAP

Enroling children for Early French Immersion in New Westminster means signing up within the first six months of your child’s life because of the first-come-first-served process. What will you do to change this and require parents to sign up their children for Early French Immersion before they are born?

Michael Ewen: I think that children should be signed up in the Royal City tradition of generations count for everything and those who have just moved here should count for very little. Each children should be ranked on how many generations have lived in the Royal City and they should be accepted in order of their family lineage. For those with less than a generation in New Westminster they should be required to pay a surcharge to be admitted into our premier programs.

Bonus question inspired by Jen Arbo: Fundraising for a playground at Qayqayt Elementary has been a community-lead effort. As school trustee, how many bottle drives and online contests will you help push instead of getting proper funding for these things?

Michael Ewen: I have actually been in contact with the Royal City Record and their leader, Pat Tracy (Dick’s sister), she has pledged to support us in our fund raising drive if we supply her with banana bread. Therefore I pledge to start a series of cupcake sales and Burger Heaven burger events to eat our way to a properly funded playground. We’ll be able to incorporate the cupcake sales into our new “practical” curriculum, replacing IB at NWSS.

Bonus question inspired by an unnamed Mayoral candidate: Since the city is responsible for all of its own traffic problems how will you transport Queensborough students to NWSS until the Skybridge from Queensborough to NWSS is built (right after the series of tunnels to move all the traffic under the city)?

Michael Ewen: After this election it have been clearly proved that between our Mayor candidates and Council candidates there is sufficient hot air and gas to inflate a number of hot air balloons to move our students from Queensborough to NWSS, in fact some of the candidates could probably do the job without much help.

Jeremy Perry is running for School Trustee in New Westminster, and he answered my questions. Thank you for answering!

Obviously this is all satire. If you can’t see this is satire, then maybe you should move to Vancouver, I hear they’re all No Fun over there.

The biggest issue in this year’s election is undoubtedly the replacement of New Westminster Secondary School, an issue that has been going on for at least a decade. Every legitimate candidate (sorry, Jim Bell) is on board with getting the rebuild started quickly. When you run for re-election in 2018, what promises will you make to convince voters that the NWSS rebuild will start in 2019?

Jeremy Perry: As with almost all trustee candidates in every election in recent memory in New West, come 2018 I will once again talk about how close we are to reaching a deal with the provincial government, and ensure that everyone is aware that we have done everything in our power to move this project forward. I will make promises that we will be hearing some very good news very shortly. It will be my most important 2018 campaign issue!

There was some recent discussion on Twitter about entering discussions with Richmond towards building a high school in Queensborough that will also take students from the Hamilton district of eastern Richmond. Two part question here: As school trustee, what will you do to ensure that New Westminster students at this Queensborough high school are reminded daily that they are better than their Richmond counterparts, and will you join forces with the pro-expansion council to annex Hamilton and make it part of New Westminster?

Jeremy Perry: Cooperation between neighbouring school districts is important, the sharing of resources can be quite beneficial. However, the first part of this question is a moot point, as I am pro-annexation. We won’t need to add “New Westminster is better” to the curriculum, as that will be clearly known by all students attending this high school, as New Westminster will have expanded and annexed part of Richmond; clearly showing our superiority.

One of your fellow school trustee candidates asked why three schools (NWSS, Fraser River Middle, and Qayqayt Elementary) are being built instead of just one. That’s an excellent question. Why not one school? In fact, why not tear down all of our schools and take over the Anvil Centre as “New Westminster School”?

Jeremy Perry: I’m surprised that you came up with the idea in the last part of your question, as plans are well under way. I wasn’t supposed to say anything (as I’m not supposed to know), but I’ve recently been made aware of in camera meetings by both council and the school board to amalgamate all New West schools at the Anvil centre. The plan is to buy back the office tower (at a significant profit for the investors who are friends of some important people). These plans are progressing quickly, and you can expect great things from the Supersized Anvil Education Centre.

What is your favourite New Westminster school and why is it Urban Academy?

Jeremy Perry: It would have been John Robson, but now, you’re right, it’s Urban Academy. Great school, great teachers, great community! I’d like to see their expansions plans exceed everything they have asked for! We should all be advocating for an Urban Academy high-rise so we can have a great focal point added to the Queen’s Park skyline!

Enroling children for Early French Immersion in New Westminster means signing up within the first six months of your child’s life because of the first-come-first-served process. What will you do to change this and require parents to sign up their children for Early French Immersion before they are born?

Jeremy Perry: We will be working hard to further limit spots in all programs of choice to ensure that students must be enrolled upon (or preferably prior to) conception. This will help ensure that only those families who have strong roots in our community will be able to access these programs.

Bonus question inspired by Jen Arbo: Fundraising for a playground at Qayqayt Elementary has been a community-lead effort. As school trustee, how many bottle drives and online contests will you help push instead of getting proper funding for these things?

Jeremy Perry: I’ll push to have 5 or 10 online voting style fundraisers going simultaneously, at all times, as these are such great community boosters in that it really brings the parents and community together, while effectively excluding any families without internet access.

David Brett is running for New Westminster city cuncil in 2014. I was initially planning on voting for him, but after doing a little more research I won’t be voting for David Brett.

See, Mr. Brett is involved in his community, and for someone running for council, that’s a good thing. He’s president of the Queen’s Park Residents’ Association, he’s on the Community Policing Committee, he’s involved with the Hyack Festival Association (and hopefully not in a crazy way like some of them). Those are good things.

He also says he wants to attract knowledge-based employers (such as technology) to New Westminster. As someone who works in technology, I’d love for that to happen.

But when you’re not an incumbent, you don’t have much of a record. For non-incumbents it’s important to go beyond the candidate’s website, because that’s where you’ll find out how they think when they’re not campaigning.

So I Googled for “David Brett New Westminster” and found his blog. In it is a post about how banning coal is unwise. Keep in mind that this article was written right around the time when people in New Westminster were protesting against a coal port right across the river in Surrey. (As an aside, this is one of the issues where I agree with mayoral candidate James Crosty — I wish others had his passion for stopping the coal terminal). The coal terminal is a big issue for New Westminster residents, with Crosty claiming that a petition he initiated received twice as many signatures from New West residents than those who voted in the last election, which would be about 20,000 signatures out of about 58,000 voting-age people. That’s a lot of people opposed to the coal terminal. Mr. Brett isn’t one of them.

It also appears that Mr. Brett is a climate change skeptic. Or, at least he was in 2007. Never mind that just before Mr. Brett wrote this the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report came out (specifically the Contribution of Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis) which stated that “warming of the climate system is inequivocal” and “most of the observed increase in global average tempeartures since the mid-20th centure is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” But yeah, I guess when thousands of scientists come out and say that global warming is here and it’s at least 90% likely that humans caused it, “it’s time to become skeptical”, as Mr. Brett says.

I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who not only gets quite a bit wrong about coal (Mr. Brett’s arguments about “if we ban it someone else will just do it” are nearly the same as those the Harper government gave when it wouldn’t block the listing of chysotile asbestose as a hazardous substance, thus allowing Quebec asbestos mines to stay open) but also expresses skepticism over something that the overwhelming majority of scientists say is happening. Climate change is the biggest crisis this world is facing, and it’s something that we can tackle on a local level. It’s not as bad as it is in the United States but I strongly believe that climage change skeptics have no place in any elected body.

Further, about the coal thing. I compared it to asbestos above, but perhaps that’s being unfair. They’re kind of apples and oranges. Yes, you dig both out of the ground, but one causes 22,300 premature deaths a year in Europe and 250,000 premature deaths in 2011 in China, has more radioactive impact than nuclear plants, can pollute not only the atmosphere but also rivers, and the other is asbestos.

The coal that would be shipped through Fraser Surrey Docks is thermal coal mined in Wyoming. It would be loaded onto barges, sent to Texada Island, and then shipped to Asia to burn for electricity. The primary economic benefit to Canada is 25 full-time jobs and 25 indirect jobs. In defending his position Mr. Brett links to an article talking about the coal mining and transportation industry in BC, and how it’s responsible for 26,000 direct and indirect jobs. That’s fantastic, and it’s an important part of our economy. However, the FSD coal terminal wouldn’t support BC’s coal mining industry, it supports Wyoming’s coal mining industry. The FSD coal terminal would increase the number of jobs by 0.2%. That’s peanuts. 50 jobs are important, but to fear-monger by saying things like “British Columbia cannot afford to lose 26,000 jobs created by the coal industry” is incredibly disingeneous. If it is all about the jobs, then why don’t we keep mining asbestos?

Then there’s the argument that they need it for electricity. That’s right, they do. And they need to wean themselves off of it, because pollution caused by burning coal for electricity causes hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year. It’s dirty, it pollutes our atmosphere and it kills people prematurely. And China gets it, aiming to have a peak for their carbon emissions by 2030, after which they will begin to move downwards. They know they need to curtail their carbon emissions. They know that they burn too much coal for electricity. We should be helping China in their targets by slowing coal exports to them, not making it easier for them to burn coal. Like the UN put it, “China and the United States have demonstrated the leadership that the world expects of them.”

I expect the leaders of my community to demonstrate the same leadership, and that’s why I’m not voting for David Brett.