New Westminster city councillor Nadine Nakagawa is no longer part of Community First – but she still supports the political party’s platform.
Nakagawa posted a video on Instagram on Jan. 8 to provide an update on her community and education plans for 2024. In that video, she stated she was no longer a member of Community First.
“I didn’t renew my membership at the AGM in the summer,” she said. “That’s really about the way that I want to do work and what I want to focus on moving forwards.”
Nakagawa was part of the Community First slate that saw five members elected to council (the mayor and four councillors) and six members elected to school board in the October 2022 election.
“I am really committed on the platform that we ran on jointly, and a big fan of members of that team; I think they’re doing a good job,” she said in her video. “So, functionally this won’t make a difference in the way I do my work. And it doesn’t really change my priorities or focus because I’m still focused on housing, climate, public spaces and public engagement, and in building a really inclusive community.”
On the same day that Nakagawa posted her video on Instagram, Community First posted a statement on Facebook.
“We would like to respond to some recent questions about Councillor Nadine Nakagawa and her membership with Community First New Westminster. Nadine did not renew her membership at our AGM in June 2023; however, she has remained very supportive of the CFNW platform, the CFNW councillors, school trustees and Mayor Patrick Johnstone,” said the statement. “We are appreciative of all the hard work Nadine did in helping to establish CFNW and her continued support.”
On Instagram, Nakagawa shared that she was starting a new school program, and would be working on getting a master’s in counselling psychology. She also stated she was working on a number of other initiatives, including a community land trust project and a neighbourhood house.
In an interview with the Record, Nakagawa said she is going to work on those projects, in addition to her day job, consulting work and council duties. She said her decision not to renew her party membership came after reflecting on how she spends her time.
“There's a sense that when you're in elected position, that you're just on 24 hours a day and doing the job 24 hours a day. And while I'm really committed to community work as a huge part of my work, I do have to prioritize where I put my time and energy and how I maintain my wellness,” she said. “Being part of a party requires time and energy put into liaising with a party, working with a party, meeting the party's goals.”
As outlined in her video, Nakagawa said she wants to focus on pursuing a number of projects.
“So, it's really about how I want to work with the community and how I want to spend my time, and I decided that the party isn't where I want to invest my time at this at this point in my life,” she said.
The New West Progressives and some Community First New West critics have raised concerns about its handling of the Dee Beattie issue in June 2023. (Beattie resigned in September 2023, after it was revealed in June that she had been trolling parents, education officials and others online.)
Nakagawa said her decision had nothing to do with Beattie, as she’d already made her decision not to renew her CFNW membership before the Beattie controversy broke.
“But I do think that one of the things I have been thinking about is the tone of political discourse in our community, not just in New West but in the larger world,” she added. “I'm really committed to telling the truth and speaking my truth, and I really am regretful about the tone that some of our political discourse is taking. And, you know, that's not just Dee, but is related to the way that other elected officials can convey information; it is troubling. But it did not contribute to my decision to be part of a party or not. I think that that issue is deeper than just Dee.”
Coun. Daniel Fontaine, one of the founders of the New West Progressives, is concerned Nakagawa waited seven months to “communicate to voters and to the citizens and small business owners in the city that she's no longer politically aligned with the governing majority at council” and that she made her announcement on Instagram. He said it’s pretty significant that a member of “the governing political organization in the city has lost a member of their caucus.”
Fontaine said he’s tried, unsuccessfully, to find another example of where a member left a political organization and took seven months to communicate that to the public.
“There's just such a lack of openness and transparency,” he said.
While he had heard rumours that Nakagawa had left Community First New Westminster, Fontaine said it had not been confirmed until she made her announcement on Instagram.
“It begs a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions like: If she's left Community First, why did she leave? Why didn't she just stay with the party she was with? Are there any concerns that she has regarding Community First? Why announcing it now in January versus, you know, six months from now? I mean, I have a lot of questions. Her voting pattern to date has demonstrated that she still is very much, I would say, aligned with her former political organization.”
Fontaine went on to say that it appears Nakagawa is distancing herself from “the Community First brand.”
Nakagawa said it would be a mischaracterization of the facts to suggest she isn’t politically aligned or politically supportive of the platform that Community First candidates ran on in the 2022 election.
“I made it very clear that I am still committed to the platform,” she said. “And I think members of the community elected me to stand up for issues that matter to them.”
Nakagawa said she ran on a Community First platform that prioritized issues like housing, climate action and environmental stewardship, public engagement and public spaces, and she remains committed to those issues.
“I will be honest, nobody has actually asked me, except for very, you know, dyed-in-the-wool Progressives, about my decision not to be part of the party,” she said. “They've expressed much more interest in things like land trusts, in neighbourhood houses, in the budget. These are the things that people care about. And so I remain committed to those things.”
Nakagawa said she was an engaged community member before she was elected to council and worked on a lot of different projects, and that’s something she will continue to do.
“I am sort of putting aside my elected official hat and working on that more as a member of the community. And that's the work that I really, really love,” she said. “I did it before I was elected, I'm sure I'll continue to do it long after I'm no longer sitting in that seat.”
The Record questioned why Nakagawa didn’t announce she was no longer a member of Community First when she opted not to renew her membership at the party’s annual general meeting.
“To be honest, it just got really busy. I have other work that I do. I released a big report called the Barriers Projects in September. We had UBCM (Union of B.C. Municipalities),” she said. “I was very, very busy with other work and, again, focusing on the issues, I think that matter to members of our community more so than the insider political baseball game that goes on.”
According to Nakagawa, the only person who has asked her about her decision not to remain on the Community First slate is a family member of a candidate who ran for the New Westminster Progressives.
“Nobody else actually asked me about that announcement,” she said. “So again, that really reinforces my belief that what people care about are the issues in our community – you know, the heat dome cooling; all these things that I have been active on, I will be active on. People know how to reach me, I'm around, you know, you can find me in a local coffee shop, going for a walk along the Quay. I'm around. It's not like people can't ask me or reach me if they have questions. And people haven't seemed interested. So yeah, I think that that really reinforces my belief that that's not the top issue in people's minds.”
As of Jan. 18, none of the people who had responded to Nakagawa’s 2024 update on Instagram had commented on the announcement that she was no longer a member of Community First.
“I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve and I'm really committed to truth telling, so if people want to know anything, if they have any questions for me, any specific questions, then I'm absolutely open to always having a conversation with folks, working with them, collaborating with them,” she said. “But I'm not interested in engaging in this sort of gotcha political discourse that seems to be the flavour of the day.”
Party criticisms
Fontaine was critical of the timing of Nakagawa’s announcement that she’s no longer a member of Community First, but he also said he was “profoundly disappointed” in the delayed announcement from a political organization that “purports to supporting openness and transparency,”
“For them to only today, come out and provide the public with a confirmation that a member of their caucus, not just any member, but like a founding member, a member who is a two-term councillor, is no longer in their team, is just astounding to me,” he told the Record Jan. 8.
As a registered elections organization in New Westminster, Fontaine feels it’s incumbent that Community First inform the public if one of its elected officials departs or is removed.
“They shouldn't have to find it on Reddit or go take a look at the website and see that her bio and picture has been removed from the website,” he said. “I just think that the bar is a little bit higher than that, and I think they failed on the openness and transparency test in this case, as well as many other situations in the past 14 months.”
In a statement to the Record, Community First responded to a question about the timing of its announcement about Nakagawa.
“Our party continues to have a strong relationship with Nadine,” said James Richardson, vice president. “Our view is that it was up to her to decide when and how to make this announcement.”
