Seven Nanaimo election candidates, most of whom share some similar views and values, debated each other two days before election day.
City council hopefuls gathered for a debate organized by council candidate David Wang at the Beban Park social centre on Thursday, Oct. 13, and talked about taxes, crime, homelessness, COVID vaccines and other topics.
On taxes, council candidate Jeff Annesley said the city can’t cut taxes just for the sake of cutting taxes because it could wind up having to borrow money, but said the city should “stop the hiring, stop the spending” and look at paying down debt to reduce servicing costs.
Candidate Derek Hanna said the next council will need a chance to “see the books” to get a clearer picture, but said as a starting point, there should be no property tax increase next year.
“What I’m looking to find out is can we roll them back? Because I’m seeing a lot of development going on in the city … so if we’re actually increasing the tax base, why does this city need any more money?” he asked.
Candidate Mike Hartlaub said there’s not enough accountability with the other taxes the city collects on behalf of the regional district, hospital district and library system, for example, and said the city should be providing more access to information as a general rule.
Wang plugged his idea of a ‘My Tax Money Nanaimo’ app and website that would present more user-friendly information to residents about how much projects cost, how taxes would be affected and how council members vote on projects impacting taxation. He said the current council has justified expensive projects because of perceived environmental value.
“It’s categorically unacceptable for someone to be taxed out of their own home and this is a direct result … of the city’s reckless spending,” Wang said. “The federal government is to blame for that as well, but the municipal government seems to be following the exact same model.”
Candidate Nick Greer offered a similar opinion, saying if he’s elected, he would make a motion to rescind the City of Nanaimo’s doughnut economy framework which he said is expensive, among his other criticisms of the model.
“It’s concerning and some people have said we potentially could even bankrupt the city in 10-15 years if we do everything it says,” Greer said.
Candidate Frank Pluta, a former councillor and regional director in northern B.C., said he would draw on his political and small business experience and accounting education to find solutions to budget pressures.
“I was always told when I brought up a motion, ‘well if you find the money, we’ll do it,’ so I found the money and we did projects,” he said.
Brunie Brunie, the lone mayoral candidate participating in the debate, said she would bring a motion forward to decrease the salaries of mayor and council, for starters.
“The city needs to be more prudent in its spending,” she said. “I saw three guys in a truck cutting the grass in an area that was gated. Do we really need that?”
Candidates addressed crime and social disorder at various points in the debate. Annesley argued for “law and order” and said for Nanaimo’s downtown to improve, the city needs to fight crime.
“That’s the problem. You want downtown to work, you need to clean the streets up. We need to empower our police officers to do that, to make those arrests,” he said.
Hartlaub said the City of Nanaimo made a mistake by declaring a climate emergency when it should have been focusing on what he believes are more pressing issues.
“Nanaimo’s actual emergency is the crime, mental illness, homelessness…” he said. “If we actually declared a state of emergency regarding those very things … we would have had a better position against the provincial government to actually get the funds to address those issues.”
Greer suggested homelessness and crime seem to be greater problems in places where “conservative values” aren’t as prevalent. He’s running partly on a downtown revitalization platform so he said it’s “tragic” that downtown Nanaimo has become a “no-go zone” for a lot of residents.
Wang promoted a “tough love” approach to tackling both homelessness and crime.
“We’re a compassionate people, we do care, we don’t want to just push people aside, but at the same time, I want to emphasize this is a city for law-abiding, peaceful people. The social contract dictates that if you’re going to live with your brothers and sisters in a community, you’re going to do so in a law-abiding manner,” he said. “I want Nanaimo to be a city of law and order with compassion.”
The debate was held in a town hall format, with audience members asking unvetted questions, so candidates fielded two questions premised around concerns about 5G networks, for example. They were also asked two questions asking them to outline and then repeat views on sexual orientation and gender identity education; no candidate voiced a pro-SOGI stance, but not all chose to answer.
The three-hour event degenerated at the very end following the final question, which was about the COVID-19 vaccine. The audience member who asked the question disagreed with Annesley’s view that people should have the choice whether to be vaccinated, and shouted at him at length, expressing that children didn’t have a choice not to be vaccinated.
“There’s 10 per cent of us, there’s 90 per cent of them, OK? We have to let them have the choice,” Annesley said. “I agree with you, with the kids it’s awful. [But] they have to have the choice.”
Hanna said he tried to hand out literature at a drugstore cautioning parents about the vaccine but was told to leave by mall security.
“If I’m elected on council I am going to push against anything that is supporting something that is unethical, that is dangerous. But I cannot change the idiotic decisions being made by parents that choose not to even educate themselves,” he said.
Brunie said the worldwide sentiment that refusing the vaccine makes someone a bad person doesn’t feel right to her and said people should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies.
Election day is Saturday, Oct. 15.
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