Burnaby North MLA Richard Lee is being targeted in a recall campaign after complaints from residents that hasn’t been doing a good job in the riding.
Indeed, some people say they couldn’t even pick Lee out in a lineup, said a campaign organizer, even though the Liberal MLA was elected to his fourth consecutive term in Burnaby North in 2013.
“We’re trying to recall him because we feel he has not represented his citizens well in that riding,” said Jennifer Heighton, one of the organizers of the group B.C. Citizens for Recall. “When we’ve been talking to people in the riding they either don’t know who he is or are unhappy about how he deals with the issues. One of the words we heard was ‘invisible.’”
The group, founded six months ago, has been knocking on doors to determine how people feel about their MLAs as well a potential recall. A dozen Liberals have been identified who could potentially be recalled across B.C., because they either won by a small margin or the split votes between opposition parties added up to more than the Liberal candidate received.
Lee, who kept his seat in Burnaby North with just 688 votes, and Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows MLA Marc Dalton, who survived a previous recall campaign against him in 2011, are the first to be targeted by B.C. Citizens for Recall under the legislation that came into effect in 1995. To trigger a byelection, a recall campaign has 60 days to collect signatures from 40 per cent of registered voters in the riding who were also registered in the last election.
“Our goal is accountability for a government that listens to the people, that takes into account what their needs are,” Heighton said. “The government right now doesn’t seem to be paying attention to what we’re doing.”
Heighton, a Coquitlam resident and Burnaby school teacher, said she was compelled to take action after becoming frustrated during the teachers’ strike when she realized “how much the government was willing to do to ignore their citizens.” She noted recall is the only legal process for B.C. citizens to remove their MLA if they are dissatisfied with their performance.
In Burnaby North, concerns have been raised about underfunding issues at Burnaby Hospital, as well as seismic upgrades for schools and escalating poverty rates, Heighton added, while those in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows are worried about ambulance waiting times and the fact that Dalton has decided to sit as an independent to seek the Conservative nomination in the upcoming federal election.
“There are so many issues across the province: pipelines, fracking, health and education across the board,” Heighton. “There are so many issues that undermine people’s rights.”
Lee said he heard about the recall issue from one of his constituents but he isn’t taking the effort personally because it appears the campaign is about provincial policy. He maintains he has been striving to improve the situation at Burnaby Hospital, but “you can’t solve everything.”
He said that he wasn’t sure why he is targeted but he expects it’s because he had won the riding by such a low margin.
“I’ve been trying very hard to serve the community for a long time. Our door is always open and I listen to what people are saying,” Lee said, adding once a month he holds a forum in the community to listen to people.
“We cannot just change one MLA to address all these issues. I try my best (but) if people feel that way, it’s a democratic process.”
In 1998, Paul Reitsma, the former Liberal member for Parksville-Qualicum, resigned after area residents collected enough recall signatures to force a byelection in his riding. The recall was based on a fake letter scandal, in which Reitsma disgraced himself when he was caught writing phoney, self-promoting letters to newspapers.
