By Chris Beach

Northern View

The Northern View #57: Lower Mainland’s municipal boondoggle

Feb 19, 2025 | 11:59 AM

Lately it’s come to light that Metro Vancouver mayors are raking it in, unbeknownst to most taxpayers.

Not surprisingly Port Coquitlam’s Mayor Brad West made a motion calling for Metro Vancouver meeting stipends to be cut in half from the current $537 – and for the elimination of double that pay if the meeting goes over 4 hours.

These stipends are paid in addition to their full-time salaries as mayors. But where was Brad West a month ago? This current fee structure of being paid over a thousand dollars for a half day’s work has been in place since 2019, and that’s only for Metro Vancouver Meetings.

What about Regional District, Translink and the myriad other meetings these mayors attend? No wonder Brad West didn’t want to take a run at leading the BC free-enterprise coalition last year. John Rustad, the Leader of the Official Opposition for the entire province, only makes half of what West makes for leading one municipality.

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At the opposite end of the spectrum is our small-town northern mayors who, if not retired on a good pension, have to work at least one full time job to subsidize their downright miniscule part-time municipal salaries.

The mayors of towns like Houston, Fraser Lake and Mackenzie, who, in addition to keeping their towns running on a skeleton staff, are dealing with catastrophic mill closures in their communities making it nearly impossible to maintain services.

Perhaps Richmond’s Malcom Brodie or Burnaby’s Mike Hurley could shave off a few slices of their $400,000 salaries to help out their small-town northern counterparts? But that, of course, is never going to happen.

What is even more unfortunate about the Lower Mainland municipal boondoggle is that the NDP government decided to shut down the Office of the Auditor General for Local Government, big surprise, in 2019, 6 years ago. It’s become clear why these big city mayors pushed so hard against provincial oversight. And the local taxpayers paid the price.

I’m Chris Beach and this is the Northern View.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.