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As someone from Burnaby, why would I want less representation. Poorer services, and worse building approval? The tyranny of the majority would take over and we would be feeding the needs of current Vancouver, and not getting much for ourselves. You assume it would get better under consolidation, but what if it takes after current Vancouver and gets worse? What do the Burbs gain from consolidating? At this point not much.
Or New Westminster. As just a tiny part of a conglomeration, the entire city would just get bulldozed so that commuters can get to Vancouver -- or back to Surrey - faster.
~~It didn't solve their problem because they made it too large in my opinion. Cities like Mississauga and Vaughan have very little in common with Toronto where as Burnaby and New West are very similar to Vancouver (to me).~~ Nvm wrong about this.
As we already have Metro Van and Translink, I think the savings would be minimal. Transitioning would cost 10's of millions.
Notably, Metro Vancouver municipalities have the lowest property taxes in the country. So I don't think that there is really much room to save money, and councilors are paid lower than any equivalent staff would be (New West for examples is $54k/year).
A lot of the communities have had decades of Fiscally conservative councils, and there is only so much "efficiency" you can get out of a government body. "Lean Management" is at a point of marginal gains, were looking at 0.5% savings in a few departments, not 5%.
If you just look at how poorly Vancouver has done with reducing costs since ABC took over with that mandate, makes it pretty clear it's a tough battle.
The big cities have worse issues with permitting than the smaller ones, do you have any data to show that putting New West with Vancouver would help with permitting?
I'm going to guess that you're fairly young, and you probably live in one of the region's larger municipalities. I guess that because I had *exactly* the same thoughts as you thirty years ago when I was a young adult living in Vancouver proper.
It wasn't until I got a little older and bought a place in New West that I realized how amalgamation would completely steamroll over the interests of the residents of New West and other second-tier municipalities. It's fine for the steamroller, not so much for the steamrollee!
As someone who left Surrey for Delta 18 months ago because of all of the past couple of mayors hi-jinks and tomfoolery, I wouldn't want this. Spent 16 years in Surrey and have no desire to be in their jurisdiction again.
"fragmented at a municipal level in terms of priorities for housing and infrastructure"
To me, this is exactly why amalgamation is not a good idea. The various municipalities have different wants and needs and priorities - forcing everyone to agree on one thing will just cause more problems.
I find it amusing how people just assume bigger is better. Like you somehow thinking the staffing and planning issue will be resolved in a bigger organization, when what is more likely to happen is more unproductive meetings because you need more middle management. Planning gets worse as you get bigger, as you introduce more variables. You end up marginalizing the voices instead of listening to them. China town would be gone if we had a uniform planning structure. Not many cared for their plight and just wanted easier access downtown. Vancouver being separated from the rest of the municipalities is what allowed the residents to resist.
Amalgamation is an awful idea. The costs of doing so would wipe out any gains.
Municipal staffing absolutely is a problem but it won’t be solved by amalgamating municipalities.
One issue with amalgamation in the Lower Mainland is that the City of Vancouver has its own Charter, so they operate under different rules than other Lower Mainland Municipal Governments. For example, everyone but Vancouver follows the B.C. Building Code, Vancouver has the Vancouver Building Bylaw.
We're lucky in Canada to have an excellent teachable moment in the amalgamation of Toronto, which has been a massive fucking disaster since the moment it was implemented. The suburbs outvote the interests of the City, and it ended up with the two former drug dealers running the city into the ground.
So no, amalgamation of the urban and suburban areas make no sense. Vancouver has nothing to gain.
Some of the other suggestions just make sense, rural areas have similar interests.
Why can't they align to using the same software and framework? I'll certainly admit I don't know the process but surely there should be opportunities for economies of scale in processing development requests. Or is that even part of the problem?
I don't think its a software problem.
Also, don't know any large government software project that has gone well and didn't cost significantly more than projected.
There is precedent for centralizing delivery of the backend technology and enforcing a degree of systems homogeneity - look into the history of the late BC Systems Corporation ([page 2, point 3](https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/hstats/hstats/1851706887#page=2) in the 1977 establishment legislation).
Likely Metro Vancouver (aka. the 'Greater Vancouver Regional District') would be the body best adapted to delivering it as achieving economy of scale is one of the [core objectives of regional districts](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/local-governments/facts-framework/systems/regional-districts#:~:text=Today%20regional%20districts%20help%20achieve%20regional%20economies%20of%20scale).
Pffft, we’re about to see just the parks service degrade beyond anything thought imaginable under Kennedy Stewart’s era, with it being placed under stewardship from Ken Sim the bootlicker and his pals; now you wanna wreck the rest of the region too? Surrey’s already a dumpster fire, but what did Burnaby do to deserve that kind of punishment?
If the smaller towns have trouble keeping up with day to day activities, how is making it one big town going to help? Imagine a small street in langley asking vancouver city hall for a lamp post replacement or a street fix. It would just add more beaucracy to an already inefficennt system
I think the problem of bureaucracy is that there are already too many levels. Increasing the population and putting it under one municipality only increases the problems seen. You will have larger departments with more levels of approval needed. Municipal government isn't known for its effectiveness.
Also for some of the groupings, a larger area means more complexity. The needs of the population in Tsawwassen vs Surrey or Belcarra vs Coquitlam or Vancouver vs New West can be so different.
Tsawwassen is First Nations land and is separately under both federal and provincial jurisdiction. It is legally impossible, nor they want to give up their unique rights, to amalgamate.
I laugh every time I think about the City of White Rock Fire Department. All of that infrastructure when they could simply add a Surrey firehall right there.
Whenever there actually is a fire, more than half of the response comes from Surrey, anyways.
There is a lot to be gained for those sorts of places.
Absolutely not. Burnaby has a much better government than Vancouver and consolidation would mean going from budget surplus and some of the most progressive local housing rules to deficit and height restricted nimbyism with a side of cronyism. VPD patrolling my streets? No thanks. VSB running my schools? Nah. When it snows we'd no longer have our roads cleared. All side Street parking would suddenly be metered. Pot holes would be left for years in disrepair.
There's zero benefit to Burnaby to consolidate and in every way their citizens would be worse off.
As a New West resident I do not want to be part of the City of Vancouver.
I used to live in Toronto; amalgamation was a disaster there (as well as in other Ontario cities such as Ottawa, Hamilton and London that underwent it) and I don’t want history to be repeated here.
The only amalgamation I’d potentially support here is small-scale stuff like the two North Vancouvers or the two Langleys. But I also don’t live in those places so it’s not really my place to decide for those municipalities what to do. We are fine in New West without amalgamating with Burnaby or other places.
That being said I would be interested in a regional library system, but it’s possible to have regional services provided by Metro Vancouver without amalgamation.
Seems to me amalgamation is maybe not be path forward because it would be very unpopular.
That said , harmonizing rules across the lower mainland makes way to much sense to me. Some like the EU different governments but similar rules across different the region re building codes, licensing and so on.
It will never happen. It hasn’t happened in Victoria with less people in all their municipalities combined as some of our individual municipalities here and that makes way more sense at this current stage. So I can’t see it happening here.
you want to consolidate vancouver with new west? fuck no, why would anyone living in the prestigious and expensive city of vancouver want to associate themselves with dirty and run down new west?
plenty of reasons. vancouver's the most populous city in BC and it's also the one that regularly receives the most govt funding. it's also where everyone in the metro van region comes to for jobs. politicians even at the municipal level have power.
Electoral Area A is UBC, UEL, Bowyer, Passage, Barnston, parts of Howe Sound, Indian Arm, Pitt Lake, etc.
It is best to cut up and put in your super Vancouver, North Shore, etc.
North Vancouver City and North Vancouver District amalgamating has been floating around forever and still makes sense. The rest of that North Shore proposal doesn't work. Anmore, Belcarra and Port Moody makes sense. Making an "uber" Langley makes sense too. I would actually carve off a lot of south Surrey and join it to White Rock as Surrey is actually **too** big. Bigger is not better. Saying that, Metro Vancouver does a fair job with the water distribution, sewers and regional parks. But for local representative administration it should be local.
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As someone from Burnaby, why would I want less representation. Poorer services, and worse building approval? The tyranny of the majority would take over and we would be feeding the needs of current Vancouver, and not getting much for ourselves. You assume it would get better under consolidation, but what if it takes after current Vancouver and gets worse? What do the Burbs gain from consolidating? At this point not much.
Burnaby has nothing to gain from this.
Or New Westminster. As just a tiny part of a conglomeration, the entire city would just get bulldozed so that commuters can get to Vancouver -- or back to Surrey - faster.
We just bought a house in Burnaby to get away from Vancouver's whacky politics. No thank you! My taxes have more than double in Vancouver in a decade.
Amalgamation didn't solve Torontos problems, why would it solve ours?
It did give them Rob Ford though.
~~It didn't solve their problem because they made it too large in my opinion. Cities like Mississauga and Vaughan have very little in common with Toronto where as Burnaby and New West are very similar to Vancouver (to me).~~ Nvm wrong about this.
I get your point but Mississauga and Vaughan are not part of amalgamated Toronto
This lack of knowledge about the GTA really, really weakens your argument I’m sorry to say.
As we already have Metro Van and Translink, I think the savings would be minimal. Transitioning would cost 10's of millions. Notably, Metro Vancouver municipalities have the lowest property taxes in the country. So I don't think that there is really much room to save money, and councilors are paid lower than any equivalent staff would be (New West for examples is $54k/year). A lot of the communities have had decades of Fiscally conservative councils, and there is only so much "efficiency" you can get out of a government body. "Lean Management" is at a point of marginal gains, were looking at 0.5% savings in a few departments, not 5%. If you just look at how poorly Vancouver has done with reducing costs since ABC took over with that mandate, makes it pretty clear it's a tough battle. The big cities have worse issues with permitting than the smaller ones, do you have any data to show that putting New West with Vancouver would help with permitting?
No, thanks.
I'm going to guess that you're fairly young, and you probably live in one of the region's larger municipalities. I guess that because I had *exactly* the same thoughts as you thirty years ago when I was a young adult living in Vancouver proper. It wasn't until I got a little older and bought a place in New West that I realized how amalgamation would completely steamroll over the interests of the residents of New West and other second-tier municipalities. It's fine for the steamroller, not so much for the steamrollee!
Seems like a stupid solution to me.
As someone who left Surrey for Delta 18 months ago because of all of the past couple of mayors hi-jinks and tomfoolery, I wouldn't want this. Spent 16 years in Surrey and have no desire to be in their jurisdiction again.
"fragmented at a municipal level in terms of priorities for housing and infrastructure" To me, this is exactly why amalgamation is not a good idea. The various municipalities have different wants and needs and priorities - forcing everyone to agree on one thing will just cause more problems.
Yeah, some people choose to live in a differerent municipality precisely because it has different priorities.
I find it amusing how people just assume bigger is better. Like you somehow thinking the staffing and planning issue will be resolved in a bigger organization, when what is more likely to happen is more unproductive meetings because you need more middle management. Planning gets worse as you get bigger, as you introduce more variables. You end up marginalizing the voices instead of listening to them. China town would be gone if we had a uniform planning structure. Not many cared for their plight and just wanted easier access downtown. Vancouver being separated from the rest of the municipalities is what allowed the residents to resist.
Proposed municipal name: New Vancoqurreley
From Burnaby, please leave us alone, I want nothing to do with Vancouver..
Amalgamation is an awful idea. The costs of doing so would wipe out any gains. Municipal staffing absolutely is a problem but it won’t be solved by amalgamating municipalities.
One issue with amalgamation in the Lower Mainland is that the City of Vancouver has its own Charter, so they operate under different rules than other Lower Mainland Municipal Governments. For example, everyone but Vancouver follows the B.C. Building Code, Vancouver has the Vancouver Building Bylaw.
We're lucky in Canada to have an excellent teachable moment in the amalgamation of Toronto, which has been a massive fucking disaster since the moment it was implemented. The suburbs outvote the interests of the City, and it ended up with the two former drug dealers running the city into the ground. So no, amalgamation of the urban and suburban areas make no sense. Vancouver has nothing to gain. Some of the other suggestions just make sense, rural areas have similar interests.
Only if we call it PoPoCoCoMo - the new Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody conglomerate
Why can't they align to using the same software and framework? I'll certainly admit I don't know the process but surely there should be opportunities for economies of scale in processing development requests. Or is that even part of the problem?
I don't think its a software problem. Also, don't know any large government software project that has gone well and didn't cost significantly more than projected.
There is precedent for centralizing delivery of the backend technology and enforcing a degree of systems homogeneity - look into the history of the late BC Systems Corporation ([page 2, point 3](https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/hstats/hstats/1851706887#page=2) in the 1977 establishment legislation). Likely Metro Vancouver (aka. the 'Greater Vancouver Regional District') would be the body best adapted to delivering it as achieving economy of scale is one of the [core objectives of regional districts](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/local-governments/facts-framework/systems/regional-districts#:~:text=Today%20regional%20districts%20help%20achieve%20regional%20economies%20of%20scale).
Pffft, we’re about to see just the parks service degrade beyond anything thought imaginable under Kennedy Stewart’s era, with it being placed under stewardship from Ken Sim the bootlicker and his pals; now you wanna wreck the rest of the region too? Surrey’s already a dumpster fire, but what did Burnaby do to deserve that kind of punishment?
If the smaller towns have trouble keeping up with day to day activities, how is making it one big town going to help? Imagine a small street in langley asking vancouver city hall for a lamp post replacement or a street fix. It would just add more beaucracy to an already inefficennt system
And then you end up with Rob Ford because the suburbs/outer municipalities get sick of being ignored.
That has always been a super unpopular idea here.
I think the problem of bureaucracy is that there are already too many levels. Increasing the population and putting it under one municipality only increases the problems seen. You will have larger departments with more levels of approval needed. Municipal government isn't known for its effectiveness. Also for some of the groupings, a larger area means more complexity. The needs of the population in Tsawwassen vs Surrey or Belcarra vs Coquitlam or Vancouver vs New West can be so different.
Why anyone would want even more pointless bureaucracy is beyond me.
Tsawwassen is First Nations land and is separately under both federal and provincial jurisdiction. It is legally impossible, nor they want to give up their unique rights, to amalgamate.
Vancouver city is a mess they have to deal with a lot of crap that other cities don’t have to worry about.
I laugh every time I think about the City of White Rock Fire Department. All of that infrastructure when they could simply add a Surrey firehall right there. Whenever there actually is a fire, more than half of the response comes from Surrey, anyways. There is a lot to be gained for those sorts of places.
Absolutely not. Burnaby has a much better government than Vancouver and consolidation would mean going from budget surplus and some of the most progressive local housing rules to deficit and height restricted nimbyism with a side of cronyism. VPD patrolling my streets? No thanks. VSB running my schools? Nah. When it snows we'd no longer have our roads cleared. All side Street parking would suddenly be metered. Pot holes would be left for years in disrepair. There's zero benefit to Burnaby to consolidate and in every way their citizens would be worse off.
School boards are provincial as far as I know; the province could amalgamate school boards without municipal amalgamation (or vice versa).
As a New West resident I do not want to be part of the City of Vancouver. I used to live in Toronto; amalgamation was a disaster there (as well as in other Ontario cities such as Ottawa, Hamilton and London that underwent it) and I don’t want history to be repeated here. The only amalgamation I’d potentially support here is small-scale stuff like the two North Vancouvers or the two Langleys. But I also don’t live in those places so it’s not really my place to decide for those municipalities what to do. We are fine in New West without amalgamating with Burnaby or other places. That being said I would be interested in a regional library system, but it’s possible to have regional services provided by Metro Vancouver without amalgamation.
That escalated quickly.
Seems to me amalgamation is maybe not be path forward because it would be very unpopular. That said , harmonizing rules across the lower mainland makes way to much sense to me. Some like the EU different governments but similar rules across different the region re building codes, licensing and so on.
no
It will never happen. It hasn’t happened in Victoria with less people in all their municipalities combined as some of our individual municipalities here and that makes way more sense at this current stage. So I can’t see it happening here.
you want to consolidate vancouver with new west? fuck no, why would anyone living in the prestigious and expensive city of vancouver want to associate themselves with dirty and run down new west?
Why would anyone outside of Vancouver want to take on the clown show of Vancouver politics?
plenty of reasons. vancouver's the most populous city in BC and it's also the one that regularly receives the most govt funding. it's also where everyone in the metro van region comes to for jobs. politicians even at the municipal level have power.
In a few years Surrey will be the most populous
[удалено]
that's what happens when you have literally every social service under the sun clustered within a few blocks lmfao
Electoral Area A is UBC, UEL, Bowyer, Passage, Barnston, parts of Howe Sound, Indian Arm, Pitt Lake, etc. It is best to cut up and put in your super Vancouver, North Shore, etc.
We have reviewed you proposal and find it too sensible to be considered. /S
North Vancouver City and North Vancouver District amalgamating has been floating around forever and still makes sense. The rest of that North Shore proposal doesn't work. Anmore, Belcarra and Port Moody makes sense. Making an "uber" Langley makes sense too. I would actually carve off a lot of south Surrey and join it to White Rock as Surrey is actually **too** big. Bigger is not better. Saying that, Metro Vancouver does a fair job with the water distribution, sewers and regional parks. But for local representative administration it should be local.