Burnaby North

Burnaby North covers the northern portion of the city, stretching from the Hastings Street corridor up to the border with the District of North Vancouver. The riding includes established neighbourhoods like Capitol Hill, the Heights, and Willingdon Heights, as well as the area around the BCIT campus. BC Liberal Richard T. Lee had held the seat since 2001, winning four consecutive elections, but his margins had been thinning. In 2013, Lee won by only 688 votes, making Burnaby North one of the tightest races in the province and a prime NDP target for 2017.

Candidates

Janet Routledge (BC NDP) — Routledge was a retired director of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Over a career spanning more than 30 years, she had represented federal public service workers, helping them win better wages, resolve workplace disputes, and improve working conditions. She also represented workers on the federal Employment Insurance Appeals Board and was granted commenter status in the National Energy Board hearings on the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. She was a leader in the fight for women’s pay equity, playing a pivotal role in winning pay equity settlements from the federal government.

Richard T. Lee (BC Liberal Party) — Lee was the incumbent MLA, first elected in 2001 after an unsuccessful bid in 1996. A member of the BC Liberal Party since 1993, he had served as Parliamentary Secretary for the Asia Pacific Strategy to the Minister of International Trade and Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism. He was seeking a fifth term in the legislature.

Peter Hallschmid (BC Green Party) — Hallschmid was an engineer, entrepreneur, and academic. He held a PhD from the University of British Columbia and a BSc from the University of Victoria. He was the CEO of Blackcomb Design Automation, a technology company focused on software tools for the semiconductor industry, and had previously been a professor at UBC. At the time of the election, he was also teaching at Simon Fraser University.

Local Issues

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was a central issue in Burnaby North. The Kinder Morgan pipeline and its Burnaby terminal were the subject of intense community opposition, with hundreds rallying against the project in what were described as some of the largest protests in the city’s history. Premier Christy Clark’s January 2017 announcement that BC would support the expansion galvanized opposition, and the NDP and Greens promised to use every tool available to stop the project. For residents of Burnaby North, the pipeline raised concerns about environmental safety, tanker traffic, and the risk of a spill in Burrard Inlet.

Affordability was the other dominant theme. Routledge spoke about watching long-time residents leave Burnaby because they could no longer afford to live there. Home prices in the riding had escalated dramatically, and the rental vacancy rate in Burnaby hovered near one per cent. Candidates debated the BC Liberals’ handling of the housing crisis, the effectiveness of the foreign buyer tax, and the NDP’s proposals for a speculation tax and expanded rental housing construction.

The proposed elimination of MSP premiums was a tangible affordability measure that resonated with voters. The monthly premium was widely regarded as a flat tax that burdened lower- and middle-income families, and its elimination or reduction was a pledge that all three major parties addressed in their platforms, reflecting the intense focus on household costs that characterized the 2017 campaign across Metro Vancouver.