WATCH: Global News spoke with Maple Ridge Mayor Nicole Read and councilor Tyler Shymkiw about why the city decided to ban payday loan businesses
VANCOUVER – The City of Maple Ridge has become the first in Metro Vancouver to ban payday loan businesses.
They are the shops that promise short-term loans and instant cash, but councillors and the mayor of Maple Ridge say they trap people in a dangerous cycle of debt and poverty.
Maple Ridge city councillor Tyler Shymkiw introduced the motion to the council. “I think as a city we’re dealing with some of the same constellation of poverty challenges that a lot of communities are facing right now,” he said. “In my background I spent quite a few number of years as chair of our local food bank and saw that payday loan companies really have a devastating effect on our community, especially on our working poor.”
He said people get into a cycle of loans they cannot afford and eventually get pushed on to the streets.
Nicole Read, Mayor of Maple Ridge, said this motion is something that fit within the city’s pursuit to “elevate their community.”
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There are currently six payday loan businesses in Maple Ridge. They will not be forced to close or move out of the city.
“The response we’ve got from other cities has been pretty incredible,” said Shymkiw.
He added the people that run the payday loan businesses in the city never showed up to any public hearings or meetings about banning the businesses.
“In terms of the response, everybody is definitely watching this right now to see what is the response to our move, but definitely we thought this was the most important thing we could move through our process quickly in the term,” said Read.
Stan Keyes, president of the Canadian Payday Loan Association, said Shymkiw painted an inaccurate picture of the payday loan industry and its customers.
“I never received an invitation,” he said, of the public hearings or meetings. “In fact, what I heard in media reports, no one, not even stakeholders, were at the meeting they were talking about.”
“I would have been there in a heartbeat.”
WATCH: President of the Canadian Payday Loans Association, Stan Keyes, reacts to the ban
He added he also wrote to the local media with his comments on the motion.
“I don’t understand why you bring forward a law, and take all the time to create a law when you claim that ‘look we’re going to put a stop, there won’t be another payday loan store opening in our town’,” said Keyes. “Well the assumption is of course that the industry is growing by leaps and bounds and there’s an explosion of payday loan stores opening everywhere.”
He said the growth in the industry is flat and stores are closing.
“We, as an industry, take consumer protection very carefully,” adding that the City of Maple Ridge should have done some more research.
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