Mike Hurley

And I'm Hilary.

We're joined today on The AppleBox by Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley.

Originally from Northern Ireland, Mayor Hurley has called Burnaby home since 1988 when he joined the Burnaby Fire Department.

Prior to becoming mayor, Mike served as vice president and president of the Burnaby Firefighters Association, president of the BC Provincial Firefighters Association, and president of the Professional Firefighters Burn Fund, which raised over $15 million to build a facility that accommodates families and burn unit outpatients.

I mean, this is actually one through the last election, um, the, the incumbent mayor, um, just won by, uh, by, by acclamation.

And I think now there's, I think, five? There's five parties that are really going and, and, and real- really, uh, I think, uh, challenging, um, uh, Mike Hurley's, uh, position.

But yet, I think similarly, I, I, at the same time, I think Mike Hurley has kind of done a genuinely great job in terms of managing, uh, managing, uh, Burnaby.

But then also I think in terms of kind of dealing with relationships in the region, and the kind of, I think, implications that the provincial government's, uh, housing legislation has meant for municipalities.

Because there's, of course, that layer and this kind of, I think, integration between the provincial [laughs] and the municipal elections is really touching upon how they're, they're, they're engaging each other or not.

Obviously, a steady hand is needed.

Mike Hurley, the successful mayor of Burnaby, is also chair of Metro Vancouver.

I'm sure he was less than pleased to hear Premier Eby say last year, the gong show that continues at Metro Van needs to come to an end.

So how does Mayor Hurley, who calls himself a change agent, see the current situation? We'll find out after this message.

Welcome to the Voices of Burnaby, a podcast where we have open, insightful conversations about the issues shaping our city and the people working to make Burnaby a better and safer place to live, work, and thrive.

I'm your host, Mayor Mike Hurley.

and today we're joined by Councillor Saab Dhaliwal.

With his time in Burnaby Council coming to a close, we're reflecting on his journey and discussing how Burnaby has changed over that time.

We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode.

In the meantime, you can read my weekly letter from the Mayor on LinkedIn.

I'm Mayor Mike Hurley, and thank you for listening.

Well, I'm going back a little bit to...

I hate to call him a loser because he's been a big winner, but Mike Hurley, mayor of Burnaby, was presided over the departure of Jerry Dobrovolny, who was the CEO of Metro.

That whole... water treatment facility in North Vancouver is going to be an issue, as Richard said.

But as he pointed out, no one knows what to do about it.

The Metro issue is interesting because...

Mayor Ken Sim walked away from Metro, stopped attending.

And so for the folks like Brad West and Michael Hurley and some of the others who've continued to fight this whole mess in Metro, it could turn out to a bit of an electoral ball and chain.

So

We'll see what the Conservatives do there.

The other two places where there was nobody challenging the mayors four years ago, they run by acclamation, Mike Hurley in Burnaby, Brad West in Port Coquitlam, whether they will get any serious challengers or not coming forward this time around to make those a little bit more of a race than last time.

There's a couple of people that have put their name forward in Burnaby.

No one won.

All of that is swirling around and much of that, of course, all of it occurring around the Metro Vancouver board and some of the decisions that they made.

Now, Metro Vancouver board chair Mike Hurley was asked by Global Television's Andrew Chung about Jerry Dalbervold leaving and specifically his severance package being paid for by taxpayers.

Let's take a listen.

How would you respond to taxpayers who now have to deal with paying a large severance package to him?