Todd Corrigall says he’s not out of the woods yet as far as his health concerns that forced him to pull out of the race for the Prince George mayor’s office two months ago.
But he’s feeling well enough to resume his duties as chief executive officer of the Prince George Chamber of Commerce and for the past month he's been back at the job he’s held for five years.
On Aug. 17, the 45-year-old Corrigall became the first of six candidates to show formal interest in the job about to be left vacant when Lyn Hall announced he would not be running for a third term as mayor. Three weeks later, Corrigall was in the emergency ward at UHNBC with a condition serious enough for him to be admitted to hospital.
“I’m back to work and still trying to figure things out, it’s just an endless cycle of tests and waiting for the healthcare system to fit you in,” said Corrigall. “It was unfortunate, I think we had a lot of good ideas and a lot of opportunities to see different thing happen, but in the end result the voters have made their decision and have made some good decisions and we have four years to try and move forward with better outcomes for everyone.”
In the mayor’s race, Simon Yu drew 6,092 votes and defeated the next-closest candidate, former city counselor Terri McConnachie, who had 4,152 votes. The new council incudes five incumbents – Brian Skakun, Garth Frizzell, Kyle Sampson, Cori Ramsay and Susan Scott - two former school board trustees - Ron Pollilo and Tim Bennett - and political newcomer Trudy Klassen.
Yu has no previous political experience and Corrigall likes his blunt no-nonsense style and is encouraged by how he will use his business background to become effective in his new job.
“Simon is an interesting mayor and his approach to things is starkly different than the former mayor and I think it’s different to lot of people’s approaches to that position and with that comes a lot of opportunity to realize change so I’m excited for Simon,” said Corrigall.
“He’s not a politician, he’s an engineer, and from what I can see he’s used to getting things done, moving projects forward and finding opportunities to get things done. Engineers are faced with problems and they are forced to come up with solutions and so I don’t see him politicking his way through this. I see him finding ways to come up with creative solutions.”
He was not surprised Yu won the election.
“I think the community was looking for change and he represented that change,” said Corrigall. “There was so much discussion around what had happened or not happened for the last four or eight years and there was significant frustration over that’s where people were looking for change and he spoke very effectively for the change he wants to see.”
Corrigall says he hopes council will be more willing to bring an open-minded approach to its decision-making process than what he observed from the previous council. He said he got a sense that wasn’t happening in 2021 when he served on the Mayor’s Task Force for a Safe, Clean Inclusive Community. The purpose of the committee was to advise council and city staff on ways to address social issues in the city, particular those that affect the downtown core.
“There were a lot of committee members committing a lot of time to sitting there at that table to have those discussions and the ideas that were being brought forward by those members were not being seriously considered, in fact, only the ideas of administration were being pushed forward,” said Corrigall.
“The people who are forced to live on the streets are affected by that, (as well as) the businesses that are challenged with people who sleep in their alcoves or use the alcoves as bathroom facilities, the service providers who have funding disbursed among 15 agencies instead of three agencies, the list is so long.”
Much of the civic campaigning focused on creating a safer and more inclusive environment for residents, better engagement and discussion with the public and the city’s finances and Corrigall says he will be keeping a close watch on all three of those issues.
He’s anxious to hear details of the new city council’s strategic plan and looks forward to bringing concerns from Prince George business community to council’s attention. He wants to reduce the red tape involved in setting up a new business and the barriers merchants encounter creating revenue spaces, such as the street-level patios that allowed some restaurants/pubs to remain open during the pandemic.
The chamber remains a strong advocate for reforming the justice system so that habitual criminals who shoplift in stores and vandalize property are punished for their offences rather than being detained by police and released the same day.
“Federal legislation that was passed took away some of the criminality of these offences and that’s problematic, but the nuanced layers of this are massive,” said Corrigall. “I saw a report that the federal government isn’t even tracking the proper metrics on some of their housing and homelessness programs. So if we’re not data-tracking things appropriately how can we develop policy that’s going to be effective? It certainly sounds like we are throwing a lot of darts at sheet metal.”
The Prince George chamber represents local businesses and gives voice to their issues at four levels of government – municipal, provincial, federal and Indigenous.
Corrigall says with David Eby taking over from John Horgan as premier Friday in Victoria he’s wondering who Eby will appoint to his cabinet and what their priorities will be.
Asked about B.C.’s Oct. 1 policy change in the way it collects sales tax on private used vehicle sales, a switch that now bases the amount of PST on the black book price of each vehicle rather than the actual sales price, Corrigall says the provincial government needs to find alternatives to taxation to raise revenues.
“You talk about trickle-down economics, trickle-down taxation is creating unnecessary impacts across the board,” he said. “If you look at exponential increases in housing prices, people are being taxed to death and that plays a role in housing prices as well.
“There has to be a universal discussion because we have four levels of government and if we’re being taxed at every single level of that there needs to be a discussion of how the taxes flow and where they’re being used and what the reciprocal benefit or disadvantage of those pieces are.”
Provincial and federal governments have been on hiring sprees and have taken employees out of private industry and Corrigall said tax revenues are being used to pay those wages, resulting in increased taxation passed on to the private sector, homeowners and business property owners.
Corrigall also weighed in on MLA salaries. At a time when people are dealing with double-digit inflation, sky-high fuel and food prices and exorbitant housing costs, BC Liberal house leader Todd Stone tabled a bill Oct. 6 that would freeze MLA salaries for one year and cancel the wage hike they are due to receive in April. In B.C., MLA salaries are tied to changes in the consumer price index, which currently stands at eight per cent. The basic MLA salary is $115,045 and cabinet ministers make $172,568. If salaries are not frozen, some could be in line for salary hikes of $10,000 or more.
“The problem with that,” said Corrigall, “is the government has cried foul with all of the unions asking for pay raises tied to inflation, which was inevitable, and well within their rights when in B.C. inflation reached a peak of 8.5 or 8.7 per cent and when our elected representatives have tied their pay to the rate of inflation.
“When you have the government come back and say to all of the unions that they have deferred negotiating with for so long that it’s unaffordable for us to tie your pay to inflation, but we can tie ours to inflation, that’s a pretty compelling story against them.”
