Photo by myJon, Flickr.

In the 2011 Burnaby municipal elections, voter turnout was just 23 per cent, below the provincial average of 29 per cent, according to Civic Info BC. As local elections approach again on Nov. 15, Burnaby mayoral candidates are hoping to find the issues that will engage different cultural communities and counter low voter turnout.

Candidate Daren Hancott speaks to the issues and outreach strategies that he hopes will increase voter turnout while fellow candidate Helen Hee Soon Chang focuses on the need to make our community safer by reporting hate crimes.

Chinese-Canadian voice

Chinese-Canadians are the largest ethnic group in Burnaby, making up 31 per cent of the total population, according to the 2011 Census. Hancott says they bring forth several concerns.

“There’s active confusion. Chinese people don’t know who they can vote for or who’€™s running. [Some] don’€™t know how to actually vote or anything about the ballot box,” says Hancott.

Hancott says there are some Chinese-Canadians who have been living in Burnaby for 30 or more years and have never voted.

This is an issue that Hancott and his coalition, Burnaby First, hope to address. Hancott and members of Burnaby First invite Chinese community members for tea and explain how the whole process works. He says there are translators and interpreters available on the Burnaby First team.

There are volunteers that go about the city, giving presentations in offices, church groups and other societies to inform voters of what is available to them.

“It’s not so much that I want them to vote for me -€“ sure, I do – but I want them to vote,”€ says Hancott.

Hancott says he wants to see equality and transparency.

Other issues brought up by the Chinese-Canadian community include more access to schooling, more focus on crime prevention, safety and lowering taxes.

Dealing with crime

Fellow mayoral candidate Chang has also noticed a thing or two about current issues in Burnaby. A school board trustee from 2005 to 2008, Chang says her three-year term was eye-opening.

“You get in the system and really see how people are elected and how the whole system works,” says Chang.

Chang says that Chinese-Canadians are the biggest [ethnic] community in Burnaby but that many other languages besides Chinese are spoken in the city.

“The most common theme in ethnic groups is to be heard,”€ says Chang.

Chang says because 50 per cent of Burnaby residents are immigrants, ESL learning is a concern.

During her time as a trustee, Chang pushed for an ESL Parents Advisory Council group, where

Burnaby mayoral candidate Helen Hee Soon Chang.

parents could have meetings in their mother tongue. In addition, Chang also encouraged an evaluation program to assess if ESL students continued to stay with the system and suggested an ESL student body in schools to promote leadership.

While she still advocates for these issues for new immigrants, Chang, who is a trained criminal and clinical psychologist, says her most important platform now is dealing with criminal matters.

“According to my observation [and research], there is no mandatory requirement to report hate crime to one’s jurisdiction and then to the federal government,”€ says Chang, who has been studying hate crimes since 2010.

In 2011, Chang started a petition to get the federal government to report accurate hate crime data, which in her opinion will help to provide a safety net and ensure a much better society.

In her research, Chang has also found recent gang problems popping up in the city that include youth from ethnic groups and new immigrants joining forces with street gangs or organized crime.

All of this creates more problems says Chang, who also adds there is “no proactive message” coming from Burnaby City Council on these matters.

For Chang, a validation that her work is being heard came at the Korean Cultural Festival, held last year in Moody Park. At the event, a woman approached Chang and told her how much she appreciated her work [on hate crime and helping newcomers integrate into a new system].

Having raised two children of her own here in Canada, Chang says she understands the importance of collaboration between a community and its residents. She also wants to help both parents and children.

“It’€™s time to work from inside the system”, Chang says.