Close to half of the candidates running for city councils in the Nov. 15 civic elections believe the Tri-Cities should amalgamate or that the issue should at least be studied.
The statistics were pulled from a candidate survey conducted by The Tri-City News, which found that 40% of respondents are in favour of studying the issue while 6.6% said the three cities should consolidate.
Most of the candidates leaning toward amalgamation are running in Coquitlam. Eleven of the 18 who supported studying the issue and all three people who said yes to consolidation are running in the area's largest city.
Of the mayoral candidates, Coquitlam's Lou Sekora said yes to amalgamation while incumbent Mayor Richard Stewart said the issue should be studied.
Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, his challenger Eric Hirvonen, Port Moody Mayor Mike Clay and his challenger Gaetan Royer all said no to the idea of turning the three cities into one.
Of the 50 people running in Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and Port Moody, 45 responded to The Tri-City News' survey, which was launched as a way of gauging the candidates' views on a variety of issues.
When asked if they use public transportation, 71.1% of respondents said yes and 86.6% said they believe the cities should spend more money to improve cycling infrastructure.
Another 86.6% said that cities have a responsibility to ensure the availability of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households.
Of the candidates running in Port Moody and Coquitlam, 67.9% of respondents said they believe development around the Evergreen Line is moving in the right direction.
In PoCo, 90.9% of candidates said they were in favour of a tax increase if it meant building a new recreation complex in the city's downtown area.
All but one of the 45 respondents - Coquitlam council candidate Massimo Mandarino - promised they would not quit their council job to run for higher office at any point during the four-year term.
(Candidates have made similar promises in the past. In 2011, then councillors Linda Reimer and Selina Robinson both said at the Tri-Cities' Chamber of Commerce all-candidates' meeting that the would not resign their positions to seek higher office. Both ended up quitting council less than two years later - forcing a byelection - after they ran and won in the 2013 provincial election. Reimer, a BC Liberal, is now the MLA the Port Moody-Coquitlam while the NDP's Robinson won the Coquitlam-Maillardville riding.)
The survey also asked how much money candidates plan on spending to get into office. A majority of the respondents (35) said they will spend more than $5,000 on their campaign while three said they would spend between $3,000 and $5,000, five said they would spend between $1,000 and $3,000 and two said they would spend less than $500.
The survey also tried to gauge where some of that money and support was coming from. Twenty-five candidates stated they expect to receive a union endorsement while 21 said they expected to receive support from corporations and developers. Nineteen candidates said they expected to receive an endorsement from a political party or politicians while 12 people responded that they didn't expect to receive any endorsements at all.
