'Beyond awkward': Metro Vancouver city councillors want U.S. flag removed from local arena
Two New Westminister city councillors who want to see the removal of the U.S. flag from a local arena had their proposal hit a roadblock on Monday evening.
During the beginning of last night’s council meeting, Coun. Daniel Fontaine requested that the item be added to the agenda, and it was seconded by his fellow New West Progressives party member, Coun. Paul Minhas.
In a social media post made on Monday before the council meeting, Johnstone said it struck him as “beyond awkward” that when recently attending an event at Queens Park Arena, the crowd “still had to pay respect to the U.S. flag while singing ‘O Canada,'” due to President Donald Trump’s tariff actions against Canada and threats to annex the nation.
“In my opinion, the massive American flag draped on the north end of this civic building should be temporarily removed,” he stated.
“It may only be a symbolic gesture, but given how so many New West and Canadian families will be impacted by Trump’s punitive tariffs, I think the time is now to remove the flag,” noted Minhas in the post.
During the meeting, the main point of discussion regarding Johnstone and Minhas’ proposal was whether council could add the issue to Monday’s agenda as a last-minute item.
Coun. Ruby Campbell said that while the issue was “not of interest,” she didn’t “understand the time sensitivity” of including it on the meeting agenda.
Several of her fellow councillors appeared to agree as they voted 5-2 to axe the proposal to discuss the topic further for that evening.
“Coun. Minhas and I were hoping yesterday that a simple request to add this to the end of the meeting under new business,” Fontaine told Daily Hive.
He also noted that there was another item approved under “new business” during Monday’s meeting.
“We didn’t anticipate it would take a massive amount of council’s time yesterday to pass the motion and advise our maintenance staff to take 10 minutes to unclip the flag from Queens Park Arena.”
Fontaine stated that “it was a bit disappointing to see that [he and Minhas] didn’t get it added to the agenda.”
“If I was to gauge the level of interest on council, it didn’t seem like there was an interest to really bring this forward and to have that discussion and to ratify that on council.”
He said that he and Minhas haven’t had the opportunity to reconnect about the “next steps” they want to take regarding their proposal.
Do you think Metro Vancouver municipalities should take action to remove U.S. flags from their buildings? Let us know in the comments.