Stephen Rees

Photo: 

Stephen Rees.jpg

Candidate Highlights: 

• Efficient Transportation
• Action on Climate Change
• Community Development

Trained as a Regional Planner at the London School of Economics, Stephen worked for the former Greater London Council and the UK Department of Transport. He came to Canada in 1988 and worked as a consultant in a number of Canadian cities as well as overseas. He arrived in BC in 1994 when he was recruited by the Ministry of Energy to work on transportation issues and BC's first Greenhouse Gas Action Plan. He then went to BC Transit which became Translink, where he was the Program Manager for Transportation Policy. He left Translink in 2004 and a few years later began his blog (stephenrees.wordpress.com) which is a critical examination of how we currently plan transport and land use in Metro Vancouver. This blog was recently voted #1 political blog in BC. He has been an active member of the Livable Region Coalition and also campaigns for Rail for the Valley. He has appeared frequently on local radio and is often quoted by local media on transportation issues.

Divorced, he currently lives on his own in Richmond – the city he has called home for 12 years. He is employed as a swing bridge operator but he also volunteers for the innovativecommunities.org foundation – a charity which is involved in social and economic development in BC and a number of third world countries. He is a keen amateur photographer and has had a number of pictures chosen recently for the CBC tv weather forecast.

Stephen has been working on environmental issues for much of his career, but his main concern at present is the lack of effective action being taken to fight global warming, and also to reduce our impact on the planet's ecosystem.