Mike Hurley

Mike Hurley has served as Mayor of Burnaby since 2018, defeating the Derek Corrigan administration that had governed the city for sixteen years. Burnaby is Metro Vancouver's second-largest city — it sits adjacent to Vancouver and contains significant mixed-use development, including the SFU and BCIT campuses, Metrotown's retail and residential density, and a substantial industrial land base in the eastern portions of the city. His tenure has been defined by the housing density transition that BC's provincial government has pushed on all Metro Vancouver municipalities — the requirement to permit higher-density residential development along rapid transit corridors and in single-family zones that NDP housing legislation has increasingly mandated. Burnaby has had to adapt its zoning framework to the provincial requirements while managing a local political environment where residents near development sites frequently oppose density changes. The Burnaby Mountain gondola — a proposed cable car connection between the SFU campus and the Production Way-University SkyTrain station — was a transit innovation he championed, with mixed results in the funding and approval process. It reflects a willingness to consider alternatives to conventional transit solutions for specific connectivity challenges. Burnaby's fiscal position is relatively strong for a BC municipality, partly due to its large industrial and commercial assessment base that reduces residential tax burden. Hurley has managed the city's finances through COVID and the subsequent inflationary period without the fiscal distress some smaller municipalities experienced.