Port Coquitlam mayor Brad West has accused both the federal and provincial governments of failing Metro Vancouver in its greatest time of need.
He lamented the fact that while the region's infrastructure and transportation suffers from decisions made in Victoria and Ottawa, those in power above the municipal level appear poised to "pull back" rather than tackle the issues head on.
"From 2023 to 2024, 127,000 people in a single year moved to the Metro Vancouver region," West said during an event hosted Wednesday by the Surrey Board of Trade. "It's historic and unprecedented, and there seemed to be this mistaken belief that you can just welcome people to the region, and they're not gonna have needs ... We all know that that's not the reality."
He went on to note that the region has "gone through this period of time where because of decisions made primarily in Ottawa, the strain and pressure on our systems has never been greater, and in an unfortunate circumstance of ... sh*t timing, it comes at exactly the same time as the federal and provincial government are signalling restraint."
"In the provincial context it's because they managed to turn a very large surplus into a very very large deficit," West explained. "You throw Trump and tariffs on top of it, and you get this, 'Oh, we gotta pull back'. It comes at precisely the time where all these pressures are no longer under the surface. They've bubbled to the top. We're experiencing them and feeling them eveyr single day, and it's only going to get worse."
He called on Ottawa to "make good on its lofty words and promises," and urged both the feds and the province to come to the table and be a "true partner" with Metro Vancouver.
"I know it doesn't happen 'like that'," West continued, "but for god's sake, we have to begin to start to address this, or else the future of this region is going to look very different than it has up to this point."
He said far too often, those in Ottawa appear to forget British Columbia exists, treating the province as "an afterthought at best," and when they do acknowledge its presence, praise taken the place of action.
West said he wants to see meetings "where they don't tell us how great we are, but where they tell the residents of this region that their needs will be met," adding that it needed to be done urgently as there is "no more road to kick this can down."
The mayor told the Western Standard that he believed the inaction was due to a "cultural problem with government" that transcended party lines, but added that "doesn't mean it can't be changed."
"Some of the comments I hear from the Conservative leader or MPs suggest that they're alive to some of the issues that I've raised," he said, "so I'm hopeful that whether it's them, or quite frankly any party — I'm not particularly concerned about the party, I'm concerned about the outcome — so whether it's them, the Liberal Party, whoever, someone can take this on and fix it, change it, I think that'd be a good thing."
West added that he was "under no illusions about how easy that's gonna be or how quickly that's gonna happen," diagnosing Victoria and Ottawa with "fairly engrained 'governmentitis'."
