The appointment of the mayor to represent the City of New Westminster at Metro Vancouver’s board of director is generally a fait accompli, but that is about to change.
At its Nov. 4 meeting, council will appoint one of its members as a director on the Metro Vancouver Regional District board – and it will not be Mayor Patrick Johnstone.
“Mayor Johnstone no longer wishes to serve as director on the Metro Vancouver Regional District board and therefore, the appointment of another member of council is required,” said a staff report. “It should be noted that the appointment would be effective following council’s consideration of appointing another member of council to the board.”
Johnstone said it has always been his intent to take a cautious approach to regional commitments relative to the work he needs to do here in New Westminster.
“The halfway mark in a term is a good time for me to reflect on where my energies are best applied,” he said in an email to the Record. “In short, I am finding Metro Vancouver board and committee work was taking up more and more of my time, not just meeting time but groundwork and preparation time, and I would rather spend that time back here in New Westminster working on local initiatives.”
In June, the Metro Vancouver board directors elected Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley as its new chair.
“This is also good timing to shift things up from the Metro Vancouver side, as the new chair has signalled changes in the committee structures may be upcoming,” Johnstone said, “and this opens up new opportunities for some of my council colleagues to take on some additional regional roles.”
Johnstone said he will continue to serve other roles at the regional level.
“I intend to continue to serve on the Mayors Committee at Metro, and the Mayors Council at TransLink, but am happy to step back a bit from regional committee work and open up those opportunities for my council colleagues.”
Regional representation
It remains to be seen who New West council elects as its representative to the Metro Vancouver board of directors, but there was a lively discussion the last time this issue was discussed in council chambers.
Although the appointment of the mayor to the Metro Vancouver board usually passes without little fanfare, that was not the case at the Nov. 7, 2022 inaugural council meeting.
Rookie councillor Paul Minhas put forward an amendment that newly elected New Westminster Progressives’ councillor Daniel Fontaine, who is Métis, be the city’s representative to the board. Minhas said Fontaine is citizen of the Métis nation and also has experiences that would make him “incredibly qualified” to represent New Westminster on the board.
“(It) would bring to life, all of our commitments to truth and reconciliation,” he said of his motion.
At that meeting, Coun. Nadine Nakagawa said it is important that Johnstone, as New Westminster’s newly elected mayor, represent the city at Metro Vancouver.
Only Fontaine and Minhas supported Minhas’s amendment. In 5-2 votes, council supported appointing Johnstone as the city’s director at Metro Vancouver and Nakagawa as the city’s alternate.
Prior to the October 2022 election, Community First politicians held all seats on city council. In 2022, five Community First New West politicians (Johnstone, incumbent councillors Nakagawa and Jaimie McEvoy and first-time councillors Ruby Campbell and Taha Henderson) were elected, and the New West Progressives, with the election of Minhas and Fontaine, made their debut on council. (Nakagawa has since opted not to renew her membership in Community First.)
“It will take some time for us as a council to get to know each other, to understand each other, and to really have a clear understanding of how that is reflected outside of this council table to the region,” McEvoy said when supporting Johnstone’s appointment to the regional district at the inaugural meeting.
Since being elected, Fontaine has voiced concerns about a variety of issues related to Metro Vancouver, including the pay of its chief administrative officer Jerry Dobrovolny, the soaring costs of the North Shore wastewater treatment plant, spending by Metro Vancouver to host networking events at the a national convention and calls for Hurley to step aside as board chair for his handling of the North Shore wastewater treatment plant.Along with several other regional politicians, he has called for a governance review of the model of Metro Vancouver and an audit of North Shore wastewater treatment plant.
Fontaine and Minhas were among a group of Lower Mainland politicians whose attempt to have a “snow summit” to review the region’s response to a Nov. 29, 2022 snow event were rejected. In a 4-2 vote, council defeated their motion to have Johnstone, as the city’s representative at Metro Vancouver, introduce a motion requesting that a snow summit be held as soon as possible to review and analyze the circumstances that led to a “record level of traffic gridlock” in the region on Nov. 29.
