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This Tuesday: Rank Your Next Mayors and Councillors

This Tuesday: Rank Your Next Mayors and Councillors

Hello everyone,

This last Monday, thirty of your fellow renters nearly filled every seat in the audience at the second-last City Council meeting of the year at Queensborough Community Centre.

In this show of strength and unity, we reminded members of both major political parties that they had been sent five important questions chosen by members of the union. Not only that, but that their answers would be graded by those same members this coming Tuesday September 29th at our Grading Event.

We also announced our numbers: that the final results of this grading would be distributed by 27 volunteers across 24 buildings totalling 1030 apartment units.

Everyone who attended felt really positive about our showing. Remember, in the last election, some councillors won by only 150 votes. Those thirty people who attended city council is just 1/5 of that number, meaning of those people influence the votes of 4 other people, they can determine who gets elected.

So What's the Next Step?

There's two important things you can do right now to ensure the housing and rental issues you care about are priorities in the next four years.

1) Join Our Grading Event this Tuesday

First, join us at our Grading Event this coming Tuesday September 29th at 6:30pm. If you want to attend, you must RSVP by replying to this email. To RSVP, you must (a) be a renter in New Westminster and (b) have participated in the New West Tenants Union in some way in the past. This could have been attending meetings, working with us in a project in your building, communicating with us, or being on our mailing list for at least a year.

These restrictions are to prevent any political party from sending supporters who haven't be associated with the project in any way to the voting event to influence the results.

We'll send you the location and more details when you RSVP.

2) Contact The Candidates

The second thing you can do, and this is important, is help make sure every candidate actually responds to the survey questions you all voted on. All candidates were sent the questions on September 14th and members of both the NWP and CF parties were present at the city council meeting where we made our big showing. Everyone has until the end of day September 28th to answer.

The official contact information for candidates are listed below. We want candidates of all parties to answer because the goal of this project is not to have one party or the other win, but rather to show all parties that protecting renters rights and secure, affordable housing = votes and that renters in New West are watching.

The official contact information for those candidates are included below. If you want to know their answers and ensure everyone is graded fairly, you should encourage them to participate. These people are running to represent you in office. As a resident of New Westminster, you deserve to have all the information before making a decision.

We've gotten a voicemail letting us know that the Community First candidates are sending their answers shortly, but we haven't heard from any of the candidates below. Most of them listed public Facebook pages you can message.

If you prefer email, you can copy the following into the To box in your email program:

rickfolka2026@gmail.com; dfontaine@newwestcity.ca; info@nwprogress.ca; karima.budhwani@gmail.com; geoff.homel@gmail.com; minhas_409@hotmail.com

You can use the template below, edited to your tastes or write a message of your own. This will be especially effective for anyone who might have connections to these candidates or who consider themselves among their current supporters.

Dear [Candidate] or Candidates,

Hello,

My name is [BLANK] and I'm a resident and renter in New Westminster. I'm part of a project with the New West Tenants Union to help get better transparency on where all candidates stand on issues related to rental and affordable housing. You should have received a survey of the questions the members of the union voted were their most important for these coming four years, including the right to pets and protecting affordable rents. Submitting your answers by the deadline at the end of Monday September 28th to the New West Tenants Union will help me decide if you will have my vote in the upcoming election.

If you don't participate, the final report card myself and my neighbours will be distributing in our buildings and communities will show you declined to participate. I want a chance to hear from everyone so I can evaluate all candidates fairly.

I hope to hear your answers soon.

Thank you,
[NAME]

More Information on the Grading Event

As mentioned before, the Grading Event is on Tuesday September 29th at 6:30pm in the uptown area. It is open to any renter who has participated or been affiliated with the Tenants Union in any way in the past.

You must RSVP by replying to this email.

At the grading event, we will make a few presentations:

  1. Background research conducted by our Research Team on all the candidates and parties
  2. A summary of how all candidates currently in office spoke and voted in city council these last few years on relevant issues
  3. The answers to each of the candidates questions (if received by the deadline)

Then, you will have the chance to chat with your fellow graders before finally submitting your personal scores. For each question, you'll rank their answers.

We'll tally and average the final results, and those rankings will be the ones that appear on the final report card we'll be distributing together in our buildings and communities.

If you want to get a head start on learning about the candidates already in office, you can jump onto our Work In Progress Election 2026 Report Card page. You'll find a 36 page report there prepared by our research team that summarizes what every single councillor (and mayor) running for re-election has said and done in every single council meeting where the topic was either about housing, development, or renting. Obviously that's a ton of information, and at the actual grading event, a summary presentation will be given broken down by councillor.

That PowerPoint will be uploaded to that page ahead of the event, and the page will slowly grow to include other background research and, after the grading, the final report card with your scores for anyone to view and share.

But that report card will only be the best and most objective it can be without you attending the grading event and without all candidates filling out the survey.

So please reply to this email to RSVP to the Grading Event and help encourage the remaining candidates to fill out the survey.

We'll see you then.

Published by:

New West Tenants Union