December 12, 2014

The Honourable Christy Clark
Premier of British Columbia
PO Box 9041, Stn Prov Govt
Victoria, BC
V8W 9E1

Dear Premier Clark,

I write to you on behalf of the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union, Local 378 (MoveUP) regarding the transit referendum. MoveUP represents 643 members at TransLink and Coast Mountain Bus Company working in IT, dispatch, office support and administration, security, customer service, operator training and more. The referendum affects these members directly, and it also affects the rest of our members who work for different employers but live in Metro Vancouver and rely on its transit system.

On behalf of all of our members, their families and their communities, I urge you to accept the Mayors’ Council referendum question and to support Mayors’ position in the referendum campaign.

The Mayors’ Council has worked hard and quickly to meet the task your government set in front of them: defining a plan and agreeing on a funding mechanism. The plan itself represents a carefully-wrought consensus among a group of elected representatives, each of whom had to compromise to create a collective vision. The Mayors’ Council took equal care in crafting a fair funding mechanism and referendum question that would meet with the public’s approval.

Rejecting the question would throw our region into a quagmire from which it would take years to recover, during which time our population will multiply and our roads grow ever more congested. Goods and people would not be able to move freely in the region and our economy would suffer.

The Mayors’ Council has proposed a thorough solution. The next step is in your hands. Please accept the question and throw the weight of the provincial government behind the referendum campaign.

Yours sincerely,

Lori Mayhew, MoveUP Acting President

CC: Mike de Jong, Todd Stone, Shirley Bond