Vancouver mayoral candidates square off in a debate

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – There are less than three weeks until people head to the polls in the next municipal election.

Six of the people vying to replace Gregor Robertson as the next mayor of Vancouver squared off in a debate Tuesday.

The candidates who took part were Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner, the NPA’s Ken Sim, independents Shauna Sylvester and Kennedy Stewart, Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young, and Pro Vancouver’s David Chen.

Whoever becomes the city’s next mayor will be the 40th in its history.

One of the questions the candidates were asked was: Why are you qualified to be the next mayor of Vancouver?

“You are actually the chief servant, more than anything,” said Bremner. “Your job is consult, you job is to liaise, your job is to listen. And your job is to aggregate that information.”

One of his promises is to reduce red tape at city hall and get permits out to businesses — often in the same day.

Many of the other candidates expressed similar sentiments, that something needs to change in the permitting process at city hall.

Hosted by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA), the debate took place from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. It was moderated by award-winning journalist Frances Bula.

The crowd was all-ears for any ideas on how to lower property taxes for small business owners.

“We have to get our fiscal house in order,” said Sim. “The reason why these property taxes are going up is because our budget has literally doubled in the last 10 years — from $700 million to about $1.4 billion.”

He said that’s why we see a lot of vacant storefronts.

All of the candidates touched on affordability in Vancouver. Stewart said how he would make it easier for businesses to attract and retain workers.

“I think we can be more aggressive on what I would call ‘workforce housing.’ That’s the housing that… workers would be able to live in. And we can put it around places like the new St. Paul’s Hospital, where of course, we’ll have 10,000 people working in this great new facility.”

The mayoral hopefuls also discussed legalized marijuana and transportation.

Join us Saturday, October 20th at 7pm for complete election coverage with City Vote 2018 on NEWS 1130.

What are the big issues to Vancouverites?

NEWS 1130 hit the streets to ask people in Vancouver what they thought were the big issues, and we heard a lot of familiar topics.

“Homelessness in Vancouver, especially in the Downtown Eastside. It seems pretty unreal, the amount of people and it seems to be growing. I don’t know what the answers are,” said one man we spoke with.

“I don’t know what the answers are, but that’s something they really have to work on at the municipal level or they have to source funding from the province or federal levels but it has to be addressed anyways.”

Nearly everyone we spoke with mentioned affordability in the country’s eighth most populated city.

“Housing would be a big issue. I think expanding public transportation, just making it more frequent is something really important,” one woman told NEWS 1130.

“It’s just too expensive. That says it all. I don’t know the solution. But making it easier for us in our lower 50s to own a house would be one of those big issues I’m interested in.”

RELATED: Home buyers, sellers in Metro Vancouver sitting on the sidelines

Affordability is so bad, some are considering moving.

“That’s a big issue. I think Vancouver is very expensive city to live in and I think rentals are very expensive. So daycare is expensive too, everything is expensive. It think it’s really difficult for a family to afford all the bills and everything. We are actually thinking we don’t know if we’re going to stay in Vancouver for that particular issue,” said one woman.

“Everything else is really good — we’ve got good jobs and everything. But because of this, we are actually asking the question: Should we go back to our country, which is France, or should we move to another province in Canada? It’s really a big concern right now. It’s a big question.”

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