Category Archives: BC Politics

Vancouver Votes 2018 | VanRamblings Endorses Brandon Yan

October 5, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Brandon Yan was born in Vancouver, moving to Langley as a child — a city where his family was one of the few families of Chinese origin.
As an adult, Brandon lived in Burnaby while attending the Simon Fraser University campus in Surrey, graduating with a Masters in Urban Studies.
For the past four years, Brandon has called Kitsilano home, where he rents in a pet-friendly apartment building with his partner Sam and their dogs.
Since completing his Masters degree, Brandon has served on the City of Vancouver’s City Planning Commission. At present, the truly accomplished Mr. Yan is employed as the Education Director for Out On Screen.
VanRamblings Endorses Brandon Yan for City Council

Today, VanRamblings heartily endorses OneCity Vancouver’s Brandon Yan as a must-elect candidate for Vancouver City Council. We urge you to vote for Brandon for just a few of the following reasons …

Brandon Yan, as an out and proud queer man, represents an absolutely necessary and critical voice on the next City Council to speak for the interests of Vancouver’s activist LGBTQ community;
With Brandon Yan’s background in transportation issues, ranging from regional planning to development and land use, Brandon Yan would be a key voice on City Council and the Metro Vancouver Board, working with elected officials across the region to develop and deliver on an improved transit system across our region to meet the needs of citizens, while contributing to the sustainability of life on the Lower Mainland;
The next City Council, and our Mayor, are likely to be almost exclusively Caucasian, with few if any persons of colour represented on Council. As such it is critical that a City Council member with the lived experience as a person of colour, and particularly a person of Chinese origin given that 35% of Vancouver’s population is Chinese, is elected to City Council.
Brandon Yan is an activist, accomplished person of colour and conscience who it is absolutely necessary we elect to City Council October 20th;
Youth. There is a youth revolution going on. We see it in the United States with the students of Parkland, we see it in our own city.
In Vancouver, Brandon Yan is the voice of his generation, a voice that must be heard on the next City Council.
Competence. There are City Council candidates seeking office in the 2018 Vancouver civic election who possess one per cent of the understanding of civic governance that Brandon innately incorporates into his daily lived experience.
As a member of Vancouver’s Planning Commission from 2014 to 2016, Brandon Yan was provided with a keen opportunity to understand how the development process at City Hall functions — and to say that he was unhappy with the experience is to understate the matter.

Brandon Yan wants to shake things up a City Hall, incorporate respectful community consultation in development in neighbourhoods across our city, and ensure that the voices of the community are not just heard, but that citizens in neigbourhoods across Vancouver will determine the livability of their neighbourhoods, to serve citizen interests and not the interests of members of the city’s planning department;
Brandon Yan is a disruptor, a man in hurry to ensure that purpose built rental construction, co-and-co-op housing built on city land, and a regional transit system that meets the needs of citizens comes to pass sooner than later. Being a young man with a plan for change, and the wherewithal, intelligence, commitment and experience to make it happen, Brandon Yan is one of the stars in the shining firmament of the current election cycle, a man so accomplished that he puts many of his well-meaning but underqualified competitors for City Council to shame.
When we go to the polls, we want to elect the best of us, a City Councillor who will work towards the realization of a fairer, a more just, a more responsive, a more environmentally sound, a more consultative and a more respectful plan for our neighbourhoods that meets the needs, desires and aspirations of our citizens.

Make no mistake, Brandon Yan is that person.

When you go to the polls, either next week when advance polling stations open, or on election day, Saturday, October 20th, remember the name Brandon Yan, OneCity Vancouver.
Vote YAN, Brandon, the seventh name from the end of the Councillor ballot and easy to find, a must, must, must vote when you go to the polls.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | We’re Not Here To Say, “We Told You So”

October 4, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Today, VanRamblings offers an up close view of last evening’s raucous, entertaining and informative Last Candidate Standing campaign event, now in its 6th year. We’ve edited coverage of the event down to approximately 75 minutes, from the four and half hours of the actual event.

Watch the video — it’s not only fun, it’ll provide you with some insight as to why to vote for must-elect candidates for Vancouver City Council: Pete Fry & Derrick O’Keefe, Christine Boyle & Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe (who we think is doing an incredibly wonderful job on the campaign trail), and a handful of other City Council aspirants (think: Tanya Paz & Catherine Evans) who have acquitted themselves well throughout the campaign season.

The independents held their own Wednesday at Last Candidate Standing.

- Graham Cook — a progressive, a Project Manager at a local tech company, and a volunteer board member with the Huntington Society of Canada who holds a BBA in Finance from Simon Fraser University;;
- Françoise Raunet, a public school teacher, a life-long social justice advocate, a peace, labour and environmental activist, and a mom “trying to raise two kids in an increasingly unaffordable city”; and
- Abubaker Khan, a third-year sociology student at UBC who hosts a podcast called The Chosen One, which tackles social issues, including mental health, isolation, addiction, racism, and homelessness..
Of course, as you’ll see on the video, independent Mayoral candidate Shauna Sylvester knocked it out of the park.
In fact, Ms. Sylvester … well, you’ll just have to watch the video above to see who emerged victorious on Wednesday at the terrifically inspiring and revealing Last Candidate Standing election forum event.The heading of today’s VanRamblings column?Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that we believe there is, as we wrote on our Facebook page last evening …

… an extraordinary, lovely (am I allowed to say that?) candidate for Vancouver City Council, who is the only candidate in our current election to talk about “toxic masculinity” (last Friday, the day after Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the U.S. Senate, I had nearly two dozen conversations with women who were triggered by the heartless cruelty of the Republican senators, and the entitled cry-baby — because he’s finally being held to account — Brett Kavanagh, who themselves had been the recipient of unwanted attention from men, spanning the spectrum of men’s bad behaviour). Electing Christine Boyle to Vancouver City Council October 20 is one sure way we can all fight back against toxic masculinity.

At the advance polls (Oct. 10 – 17), or on election day, October 20, please #VoteForChristineBoyle, the second name on the Councillor ballot (BOYLE, Christine), and the candidate who is first in our collective civic heart. Hey, her parents think so, too — as well as her entire family, and all her friends, and absolutely anyone who has ever met Christine Boyle.

Christine was saying to me last evening she’s concerned that she might disappoint me at some point should she elected to Council. Impossible.

I love my 41-year-old daughter, Megan — nothing, but nothing has ever disappointed me about the brightest, toughest, feminist woman I’ve every met — and lucky me, I got to be around this absolutely stunning figure of warmth and humanity, the entire time she was growing up.

The same is true, for me, about #ChristineBoyle.

I trust Christine’s judgment innately and to the core of my being (as I do that of my daughter). Some — very few — folks are transcendent and very good people. Christine is one of the good ones.

After being told two years ago, upon being diagnosed with cancer and informed I had weeks to live, I am glad to be alive, and these past months to have been afforded the opportunity to become aware of Christine Boyle for City Council.

I promise you that Christine Boyle will never disappoint you. I know, it places a lot of pressure — perhaps even a burden — on Christine’s shoulders, my writing that, and much else that I have written in support of her necessary candidacy for Vancouver City Council … but Christine is very much her own person, she knows herself — and no matter how much I may extol her many virtues on these pages in the coming days, weeks and months, she will always do what she thinks is the right thing to do — for me, and it should be for you, too — that’s good enough.

Tonight is a busy night on the campaign trail — with advance polls opening a mere six days from how, and election day only 16 days away.

The definitive Vancouver School Board candidate forum at Sir Charles Tupper School, and on the other side of town, the Van Dusen Garden Vancouver Park Board event for those running to be a Commissioner on the next Park Board … well, what to do, what to do?
Vancouver School Board All-Candidates Forum

Vancouver Park Board All-Candidates Forum

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Vote All Women Candidates | It’s Time

October 3, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Last evening at the University Women’s Club of Vancouver, at Hycroft Manor, in a townhall moderated by Lynne Kent, women candidates seeking office in the often bumptious 2018 Vancouver civic election were provided a forum to discuss the issues of importance to all Vancouver voters, and most particularly to women voters and their lived experience. Women vote in exponentially higher numbers than men, in general women’s innate social conscience determining the candidates for whom they will cast their ballot.
Today on VanRamblings: women who will save our city, and who will work with integrity & élan for and toward a fairer and more just city for all of us.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Mount Pleasant Mayoral Forum

October 2, 2018BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

On Monday evening, Little Mountain Neighbourhood House held a Mayoral Forum, at Vancouver’s Heritage Hall, located at 15th and Main.
Seven of the twenty-one Mayoral candidates seeking to fill the Mayor’s chair were invited to the forum, but only four chose to attend …

Pro Vancouver’s David Chen;
Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner;
Independent Shauna Sylvester; and
Vancouver First’s Fred Harding.

Three of the invited Mayoral candidates chose not to attend the NPA’s Ken Sim, independent Kennedy Stewart, and the Coalition Party’s Wai Young.
The evening was informative, as the Mayoral candidates addressed their policies on transit, child care, affordable housing & the livability of our city.
The evening was also informative for the politically astute — Pro Vancouver’s David Chen knew what he was talking about, and enunciated thoughtful positions on the issues, as did independent candidate for Mayor, Shauna Sylvester, the other two Mayoral candidates not so much.

As avuncular and well-spoken as Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner and Vancouver First’s Fred Harding proved to be, there was little that came out of their mouths that could be considered to be anything other than a egregious misrepresentation of the truth, indicating to anyone in attendance that neither man had anything approaching a command of city planning, leading audience members to the only reasonable conclusion: neither gentleman knew what they were talking about, and both meant to mislead and misrepresent, in service of their nascent mayoral candidacies.
For instance, on the issues, Messrs. Harding and Bremner weighed in as follows …

Hector Bremner told the audience that “the reason rental housing isn’t being built in the city” is because Vision Vancouver extracts usurious community amenity contributions (CACs) from developers, as was the case recently with a developer “friend” of the affable Mr. Bremner, who he told those in attendance the city had required “millions of dollar in CACs that made the rental apartment construction “unviable.”

Um, hmmm, no. In fact, developers who build purpose built rental through the city’s Rental 100 programme are NOT charged any CAC “fees” (building rental is good enough for the city), and as added incentive, the city allows the developer added height (for a tower, generally up to six stories), sometimes called bonus density. Hector Bremner is a current Vancouver Councillor — he oughta know better;
Fred Harding, on the other hand, made a commitment to “free transit” for everyone should he become Mayor of the City of Vancouver following the October 20th civic election. There was no promise of a chicken in every pot, but there might well have been.
Anyone who has the least awareness of what’s going on in respect of the transit file must be aware of Joey Hartman and the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s lobbying on transit with Shane Simpson and Mable Elmore, the provincial Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, respectively, Responsible for Poverty Reduction, and that this month the Minister will release his long-promised poverty reduction strategy, which in the short term will eliminate transit fares for children five to 12 years of age, and may do the same thing for children 12 – 18 (the latter is being discussed in Cabinet, and provincial NDP caucus).

Furthermore, there’s a provincial plan in the works to reduce transit fares for those earning less than $40,000 a year. At present, 212,000 low income seniors and other eligible persons 60 years of age and older, and 128,000 British Columbians designated as persons with disabilities may avail themselves of the $45 annual B.C. Bus Pass programme Compass Card, while all senior citizens are eligible for the $55 monthly, three zone concession fare card. Great for Mr. Harding to appropriate a New Democratic Party and Coalition of Vancouver Electors (COPE) longstanding, and imminently implemented policy platform on transit.

To be fair to Messrs. Harding and Bremner, their misrepresentation of the truth didn’t hold a candlestick to Coalition Party’s Wai Young telling those in attendance at the recent S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Mayoral debate that “it is the Coalition Party that has long lead the fight against that damnable 12-foot wide asphalt bike path through Kitsilano Beach, and right through the children’s play area, jeopardizing their health.” Um, nnnnooooo …

So, Monday night’s Mayoral Forum wasn’t quite all that it was cracked up to be — 2014’s Mount Pleasant electoral forum was a barn burner, candidates sitting up on a raised stage, and the audience in such a state of high dudgeon that you could all but smell the blood in the air.
Still and all, a goodly number of people, concerned citizens all, turned up on Monday night at Heritage Hall, so at least that was heartening.

In 2018, one is left with a lingering impression, a sinking, almost forboding sense of dis-ease and collective anomie that this, the soporific 2018 Vancouver civic election has become one of the most numbing, non-issue driven, least contentious & most uninvolving municipal election campaigns Vancouver’s public has experienced in recent years — none of which feels good, or leads one to believe that we’re going to get the city we need.

Kennedy Stewart aka Mr. Bland seems to be the inevitable choice for Mayor — no matter how well Shauna Sylvester performs on the hustings — OneCity’s Christine Boyle and COPE’s Derrick O’Keefe seem not to have caught fire with the public (“c’mon now people, Derrick and Christine are the two most exciting, transcendently change-making and charismatic civic election candidates in 30 years!”), there’s no good (Vision) vs evil (NPA) narrative in this campaign, Vision is likely to get wiped out on election night, and no matter how transforming COPE’s and OneCity Vancouver’s campaigns are in this election — honest, they’re the saviours of our city, why don’t people see that? — the voting public seems capable of little more than an occasional sideways glance, and a drowsy attempt to stifle a yawn.