84 | Metro Van Mess (w/ Mike Hurley, mayor of Burnaby)

So let's go back to Politics 101 because some people would say, well, what is Metro Vancouver anyway? And why does it matter? Why should we bother saving it? Why don't we just let it go?

Well, I think we all got up this morning and we all had a shower, I hope.

And we all did the things we do in the morning.

And all of that happened seamlessly because of Metro Vancouver.

The very basics of what happened, you turn on your tap, when you make your coffee, when you have a shower, first thing in the morning, that's all due to the great work that's done at Metro Vancouver, which sometimes gets missed.

There's still 1.2 billion liters of wastewater treated every day.

There's one billion liters of the best drinking water of the world placed all through Metro Vancouver through 500 kilometers of large diameter pipe, not little pipes.

So there's a lot going on and there's always 300 projects on the go at Metro Vancouver.

It's a huge organization.

Very misunderstood.

But this region couldn't work or couldn't operate without Metro Vancouver being very successful.

And if people sit back and really think about it, you say, okay, I'm in Vancouver at the moment, but if I'm just responsible for the sewers in Vancouver and then it stops at the border and then that municipality takes over and might have different pipes or whatever.

So you have to have on these big issues... that kind of coordination.

And so that's why we have to do it, but you can also see why it's so hard because every municipality has different priorities.

Different priorities, but at the same time, we're all very similar.

There's five wastewater treatment plants set aside for the lower mainland or for Metro Vancouver.

And we all share in that.

We all need that.

And all those pipes are connected one way or another.

I heard one mayor say, well, our water comes from a different source.

No, sorry, it doesn't.

We all get our water from the same sources.

Sometimes it's very frustrating when you hear things like that because people should know better.

But, you know, it's coming up to election time and some people are trying to, in my opinion, use Metro Vancouver as a battering ram to get attention for themselves.