By Alison Gu

Do you know who your city councillors are? What do they stand for? Who do they represent? 

If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you aren’t alone. In my hometown of Burnaby, only one of three eligible voters ticked a box in the last municipal election. 

If you care about issues like climate change, housing, reconciliation, antiracism, childcare, equity, or parks and greenspace—to name a few—you might be surprised to learn that your city council plays important roles in each. And that means that who you elect makes a difference. 

For example, local governments in Canada directly influence half of our energy use and emissions. In Burnaby, 40 percent of that can be attributed to transportation. Local governments have the responsibility (and jurisdiction) to build safe and accessible infrastructure that promotes healthy transportation choices.

This includes everything from vast networks of safe streets for walking and rolling to facilitating the creation of complete communities—ones where jobs, recreation, and goods and services are all within a 15-minute walk.

Cities will also be on the frontlines of climate events like heat waves, floods, and droughts. They’ll need to respond to the events, protect people, and foot the bill. This also means that when it comes to municipal budgets, fiscal responsibility must include listening to scientists by preparing for this inevitable future.

We can’t kick the costs of being prepared for these events down the road. We must invest in preventive solutions that will simultaneously help us live better, healthier lives, all while creating good unionized jobs.

Cities can also make change when it comes to housing by leveraging tools like zoning to facilitate the building of new homes, legislation to protect renters, and city-owned land to make housing more affordable. Municipal governments can bring in different types of housing and workplaces, pass inclusionary housing policies, better protect renters, and even explore publicly owned and operated housing.

And when it comes to racial justice and reconciliation, municipal governments need to ensure that equity and antiracism are incorporated into every existing and future city policy, to fully implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s local-government calls to action, and to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as city law.

Who you elect to local government matters, on both the big picture issues and on everyday issues like traffic and sewage and compost. It matters, too, because at every level of government, we must strive toward compassionate, justice-centred policymaking.

The only way to get there is for more people to see the opportunity that getting involved with municipal politics has for building a safer, healthier, and more just world.

Burnaby residents, vote in the upcoming by-election on June 26!