Vision Vancouver is in no position to play the money card against the NPA in this fall’s civic election after condo developer Bob Rennie hosted a $25,000 a plate fundraising lunch for Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson in March, according to IntegrityBC’s Executive Director Dermod Travis, in a statement issued last week. The luncheon caused outrage across the city.
“Political parties that live in glass money houses shouldn’t throw stones. Neither of Vancouver’s two major civic parties is holier-than-thou when it comes to political fundraising and neither of them seemed pressed for cash in 2011. The Bob Rennie lunch will also likely set a Canadian record for the cost of admittance to a political fundraising event.”
Rennie’s luncheon for Vision Vancouver also included a private “roundtable” discussion granting special access to Mayor Gregor Robertson. “It’s a pretty safe bet that they weren’t discussing the Vancouver Canucks for two hours over canapés,” said Travis.
Coalition of Progressive Electors members Daniel Tseghay, Maria Wallstam, Nathan Crompton, Sean Antrim and Tristan Markle, writing in The Mainlander, recently asked the pertinent question, “When developers give Vision $25,000, what kind of government do they get in return?”
Corporations and the real-estate industry donate to Vision Vancouver because it pays off.
The ruling party strategically approves developments that make their donors rich. Most notably, Wall Financial was a founder of Vision Vancouver and donated $280,000 in 2011. Since Vision came to power in 2008, Wall has seen its profits increase from $18 million to $61 million. Rize Alliance (who donated $10,950 to Vision in 2011) had their 26 story tower approved at Broadway and Kingsway, right in the heart of working class Mount Pleasant, despite community opposition of 80%.
Westbank, which donated $11,705 to Vision and $31,000 to the BC Liberals in the last municipal and provincial elections, was given a rezoning in Chinatown right in the middle of a community planning process. The Aquilini Family, who donated at least $10,000 to Vision over the last two elections … got a $35 million tax exemption for their project next to GM Place. Concord Pacific, which donated $36,250 to Vision in 2011 … is allowed to use urban farms to evade property taxes.
Under Vision’s corporate governance, condos are targeted at the most affordable existing neighbourhoods: Marpole, Grandview Woodland, the DTES, Mt. Pleasant, and the West End. Corporations see affordable and social housing as a threat to the market and an unwelcome competitor in the scarce supply of housing. As a result, Vision has worked to liquidate the existing affordable housing stock.
In the 2011 election, Vision Vancouver raised $2.2 million, mostly in five figure donations from corporations/developers and unions. The NPA raised $2.5 million. Last time out, campaign spending in Vancouver hit $5.3 million, in a city with 419,000 eligible voters. In 2008, it was $4.5 million.
Meanwhile, under Mayor Gregor Robertson’s leadership, the city has seen rents soar and its street homelessness population more than double this year, a 249 per cent increase since the last regional count in 2011. In 2014, there were 1,798 people without homes in Vancouver, and more people sleeping outdoors than in any other MetroVancouver municipality.
In March, candidates in Calgary’s 2013 election filed their campaign disclosure reports. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi — who ran his campaign on a self-imposed limit of 65 cents per eligible voter — spent $391,124. In April of this year, a Vision Vancouver-led majority City Council defeated a motion by Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr urging voluntary campaign finance restrictions for the November 2014 election.
“I think we have, in the public, a feeling of distrust of politicians,” said Carr. “I hear us not trusting ourselves, not trusting each other in terms of holding to a voluntary pact together. I know that (my motion) would be voluntary, it would not be enforceable. It would however be ultimately trackable. I think perception here is critical, and it is related to the confidence in democracy, and the democracy in our decisions, and that we should as a Council extend the hope that speakers have asked us to uphold, the hope that we can work together in terms of setting some voluntary limits, and adhere to them.”
Meanwhile, in Calgary, with 668,000 eligible voters, Mayor Naheed Nenshi underspent his own cap by six cents per voter and ended the campaign with a surplus of $120,000, most of which he donated to local charities.
Three provinces — Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba — have existing campaign finance rules for local elections that could easily be adopted in Vancouver, argues IntegrityBC, which goes on to state that since Vancouver is the only major Canadian city that doesn’t have a ward system, Vancouver should adopt Ontario election spending rules as a basis for discussion among the parties and candidates, where campaign expenditures for Mayor, Council and School Board trustee candidates top out at 85¢ per elector.
“This isn’t a big leap for Vancouver’s municipal parties,” says IntegrityBC’s Travis. “The four parties that have sat on Council in the past eight years have all supported motions calling for electoral finance reform. This is a chance to show some leadership and put into practice what they’ve already agreed to. The will is there and there’s sufficient time before this fall’s elections to find the way.”
From CityHallWatch: Donation declarations are done on an “honour system.” No independent audit is conducted. Of particular concern, CityHallWatch suggests, is the non-reporting of “in-kind” donations (think: the undeclared 2011 CUPE BC Vision Vancouver election “donation” of $1.5 million, which months later magically transformed into a precedent-setting 6.85 per cent wage increase over three years for Vancouver civic workers, setting the stage for municipal employee contracts across the province).
And where does this leave the average Vancouver citizen, minimum and low wage workers, our homeless population, senior citizens living on a fixed income, and all the rest of us? At best, of secondary concern to a cynical, Vision Vancouver-led City Council, who are more focused on paying off their friends and supporters than in representing the needs and aspirations of the diverse, majority population who reside in the city of Vancouver.
