Category Archives: BC Politics

2017 Vancouver By-Election Wrap-Up: Judy Graves

October 18, 20172017 By-Election, BC Politics, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

2017 Vancouver Civic By-Election VanRamblings Wrap-Up, Part 2

Last Sunday over brunch two of VanRamblings’ friends (yes, we have friends … sheesh) indicated their strong desire and inclination to put their names forward as candidates in the October 20th, 2018 general municipal election in Vancouver. VanRamblings was none-too-enthusiastic about the prospect of either of our friends running for political office (causing no little consternation on the part of our friends). What is the basis for our lack of encouragement of our good-hearted, socially conscious, very bright friends to put their names forward for office, which when you get right down to it is the single most civically-minded activity one could possibly consider?
The answer is simple: hurt. Politics in this latter age has become an ugly and vicious business, entirely oriented to toxic identity politics and the politics of personal destruction. The electorate is bitter, disillusioned, cynical and spitting mad angry at our elected officials, no matter their party or political orientation. Even Justin Trudeau’s “sunny ways” and entirely open and forthright style of governance meets daily with vicious pointed commentary from persons comprising the spectrum of political thought.
Whereas Donald Trump is entirely deserving of the social and mainstream media opprobrium to which he is subjected daily, such should not — and we would suggest — must not be the case with the hard-working and dedicated persons of conscience who are associated with and put their names forward for office under the banners, locally, of Vision Vancouver, the Non-Partisan Association, the Green Party of Vancouver, OneCity Vancouver, or for that matter any of the independents who choose to run for office — such as the entirely tremendous Jean Swanson, or Adi Pick.
VanRamblings is concerned with the state and nature of politics in Vancouver, and across British Columbia. When did the vast majority of the population become so cynical, alienated, apolitical and generally turned off to the decision-making that affects the quality of their lives on this planet?
In the coming year(s), VanRamblings will seek to address the issue of anomie in the political sphere, both as an academic consideration, but more importantly through action to ensure respectful democratic engagement.

PART TWO: THE MISGUIDED CANDIDACY OF JUDY GRAVES
Judy Graves (pictured above) was the affable, socially-conscious OneCity Vancouver candidate nominated to fill the Vancouver City Council seat left vacant when Vision Vancouver Councillor Geoff Meggs resigned his seat on Council to take on the position of Chief of Staff to Premier John Horgan.
From 2002 on, Ms. Graves was the homelessness advocate at Vancouver City Hall, a humanizing force of nature bent on service to Metro Vancouver’s indigent population, and a strong advocate for social housing and services to the most vulnerable among us. Little wonder, then, that the nascent OneCity Vancouver civic party (largely an amalgam of principled, younger New Democratic Party-oriented persons of conscience) chose Judy Graves as their progressive values candidate for Vancouver City Council.
Too bad, then, that Judy Graves’ OneCity Vancouver candidacy turned out to be a misguided candidacy, that effectively denied the progressive voice of Jean Swanson a very-much-needed place on Vancouver City Council.
On October 14th by-election night, Judy Graves secured a paltry 13.71% of the vote, while Jean Swanson — with whom Judy Graves had worked closely over the years — who ran as an independent candidate for Council, and whose election team had moved the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars to secure the endorsement of OneCity for Jean Swanson, garnered 21.36% of the vote, and a near-win, second place showing in the polls.
From the outset Ms. Graves had no chance of securing the vacant Council seat, and OneCity knew it, well before the campaign got underway.
From day one of the 2017 by-election campaign for Council, Ms. Graves was the subject of a take down campaign the likes of which Vancouver has never previously experienced — Vision Vancouver’s Mike Lombardi, running for a third term at School Board, and to a somewhat lesser degree, COPE School Board candidate Diana Day, suffered a similar ‘take down campaign’, ensuring their loss at the polls, but nothing quite so vicious as was experienced by the otherwise recommendable Ms. Graves.
“Judy Graves, bought-and-paid-for: don’t waste your vote” was the clarion message voters on the left and the right heard throughout the campaign.
COPE was upset with Judy Graves’ candidacy (COPE endorsed Jean Swanson: VanRamblings seconded Alicia Barsallo’s motion that COPE not run a candidate, and instead endorse Jean Swanson). Vision Vancouver was none-too-pleased, either, when the Vancouver & District Labour Council endorsed Ms. Graves over Vision candidate, Diego Cardona. And Jean Swanson’s campaign team? They were apoplectic at Graves’ candidacy! The NPA weren’t happy with Ms. Graves’ candidacy (“Vision. Boo, hiss.”), but took succour from the probability her candidacy would “split the left”, and thus secure a seat on Council for their candidate, Hector Bremner.
As the campaign for Council got underway in early September, word lit up social media and spread like wildfire that “Judy Graves is Vision Vancouver light, so developer-friendly that she puts Vision to shame, her consistently strong, entirely wrong-headed and vocal advocacy of any development that comes before Council containing even a bare component of social housing sure to garner her unthinking and fulsome support.”

Many Vancouver citizens resident on the eastside, and particularly those in Grandview-Woodland and Chinatown, worked assiduously against Ms. Graves’ candidacy. Grandview-Woodland residents who have long opposed the controversial Boffo Development at Venables and Commercial Drive — and have consistently derided Graves’ support for the out-of-character, neighbourhood destroying, thin-edge-of-the-wedge market condominium tower development — worked overtime to ensure Graves’ defeat. Same thing was true of the organizing team opposing the long controversial Beedie Development at 105 Keefer — which Graves initially supported, and only changed her mind on when she became a candidate for office, and thought better of her support for a development so widely opposed. For the folks working with the Chinatown Concern Group, Graves’ conversion to opposing the Beedie Project was viewed as a matter of too little, too late. One only has to take a look at how Graves polled in Chinatown — or Grandview-Woodland, for that matter — to know just how much opposition there was to her candidacy in these two Vancouver neighbourhoods.

The ‘active transportation’ / bike folks were none-too-thrilled with Graves’ insistence on the campaign trail that Vision Vancouver’s ‘bike lane advocacy’ was just as wrong-headed as wrong-headed could be, and that the tens of millions Vision has spent constructing bike lanes would have been better spent building social housing for the thousands of our most vulnerable citizens who are in need of safe, secure and low-cost housing.
The icing-on-the-cake (or the shiv in the back, as the case may be) that ensured a no better than distant fourth place finish for Ms. Graves was the absolutely devastating Mainlander article titled, Rethinking Judy Graves: On Charity, Xenophobia, and Class Collaboration, as withering a take down piece as you’d never want to read.

“Judy Graves’ candidacy seems to reflect OneCity’s policy of silent support for the governing party and non-criticism of Vision policies, and longtime Vision luminaries have likewise supported the Graves campaign. Where Jean Swanson has directly challenged the ‘common sense’ tax-cutting agenda, Graves combines a charity approach and a class collaboration approach that has long been popular with developers and the wealthy.

In establishment circles, Judy Graves has been touted as Vancouver’s Mother Teresa. Over the decades, Graves has emerged as an establishment figure, who has worked to individualize the fight for housing, and deny the larger forces that create homelessness and evictions on unceded Coast Salish territories. Phrases such as “hard to house,” and related concepts that pin homelessness on homeless individuals — including the dominant framing of mental health and addictions — are indelibly associated with the Graves name and legacy.

Graves has been a mainstay on the side of government efforts to close down shelters and disperse tent cities, playing a continuous role in the City’s yearly spring closure of homeless shelters, while standing by the intolerable evictions “relocating” people into substandard, unsafe, or non-existent housing.

We don’t feel that Judy Graves represents the kind of transformative politics Vancouver needs. The current housing crisis provides an opportunity to radically re-think the foundations of the system — but instead Graves wants to bring back a discredited ‘dream’ that has consistently failed our most vulnerable citizens. Graves’ candidacy pushes for the status quo. We believe it’s time for something radically different.”

David Chudnovsky, who has a long history of radical politics dating back to the 1970s — VanRamblings remembers when David, as President of the Surrey Teachers’ Association, was considered ‘too radical’ by even the most left-wing folks in the BCTF; it is this very same David Chudnovsky who worked to create the principled, left-of-centre OneCity Vancouver.
Left-wing community activist Charles Demers, who is very much involved with OneCity and is just about as radical as they come (VanRamblings wants to live in a realized society imagined by the humanist Mr. Demers) worked closely, and is best friends, with Derrick O’Keefe, one of the key organizers of Jean Swanson’s campaign for office. How is it that Derrick was unable to influence his friend sufficiently to ensure his bff’s unadulterated and enthusiastic support for Jean Swanson’s candidacy?
Surely Mr. Chudnovsky and Mr. Demers could have foreseen from the outset what the outcome of the 2017 Vancouver City Council by-election would be if OneCity refused the entreaties of the Jean Swanson campaign team to support their candidate: the election of right-of-centre NPA candidate Hector Bremner to Vancouver City Council. We know that neither one of them wanted Bremner to ascend to Council, but that’s exactly what happened — and more’s the pity for that deleterious election outcome.

No doubt the good folks at OneCity felt it necessary to run a candidate for Council, in order to raise the profile of their nascent civic party and give their very fine candidates for School Board — Carrie Bercic (who, in fact, secured a seat at the School Board table) and her running mate, Erica Jaaf — a better opportunity at the polls on election night, October 14th.
VanRamblings believes that should OneCity have supported Jean Swanson’s energized, near-winning candidacy — in the process requiring the Jean Swanson campaign team work to ensure their full support for the two OneCity candidates for School Board — the outcome on by-election night might very well have seen Jean Swanson elected to Vancouver City Council, and both Erica Jaaf and Carrie Bercic seated at the School Board table at the inaugural meeting of the new Board this upcoming October 30th, 2017.

One more column to go on VanRamblings’ wrap-up coverage of the 2017 Vancouver civic by-election: the new Vancouver School Board, from the political novices to the experienced politicos. We believe, for the most part, our newly-elected Vancouver Board of Education trustees are comprised of a thoughtful, and overall not-too-partisan group of folks who mean well, and will work in the best interests of our children, and grandchildren.
Part One of VanRamblings ‘by-election wrap-up’ may be found here.

2017 Vancouver By-Election: Bitterly Low Electorate Turnout

October 16, 20172017 By-Election, BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

PART ONE: THE NPA, JEAN SWANSON and CARRIE BERCIC
In this 2017 Vancouver by-election wrap-up, VanRamblings will address the elephant in the room. Why did the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association (NPA) not poll as well as VanRamblings had predicted in our Friday post?

The NPA: Saturday morning at 1:28am, VanRamblings received the following brief note from a senior official in the NPA campaign …

“Read your VanRamblings column calling for an NPA victory later today. Me? I think either the left split guarantees Hector’s win, or we finally see the lack of a machine within the NPA laid bare.”

In conversations throughout Saturday’s voting day with members of a surprisingly none-too-happy NPA crowd, there were several messages received by VanRamblings, the key points that were being made including the fact that …

Mark Marissen (Christy Clark’s ex, a mover and shaker in the B.C. Liberal party, and de facto NPA by-election campaign manager) — despite everything VanRamblings had been told throughout the by-election campaign — ran a disorganized, untargeted, underfunded and generally confusing / losing campaign for Council / School Board. Most NPA folks who weighed in would rather have had Greg Wilson and his Purple Mafia — the political racounteur par excellence who ran Vision Vancouver’s successful 2005, 2008 and 2011 campaigns, before he saw the light, pulling a reverse Bob Ransford and joining the NPA — who were the more experienced winning team, with better political instincts and a track record that many NPAers looked upon favourably. So, what happened?
A philosophical split within the ranks. Half of the members of the NPA fashion the party as the New Progressive Association, this group made up of younger, non-partisan, nominally right-of-centre folks (think: former Park Board Chair Sarah Kirby-Yung): bright, educated, driven, democrats to their core, folks who want power for the public good that can be done. Many of these folks are populist, Trudeau-style Liberals.
The other half of the NPA membership: Stephen Harper acolytes, decidedly right-of-centre, traditionalist Conservative / Reform party supporters, who believe less government is better government, folks who think God broke the mold after former provincial Finance Minister Mike de Jong and current B.C. Liberal party interim leader Rich Coleman were born. Never the twain shall meet, it would appear (there’s the same push-pull going on in the B.C. Liberal leadership race, with Todd Stone targeted as a ‘liberal’ … a nasty thing many B.C. Liberals believe).

Internal political warfare within the NPA cost them votes, as did their lack of a get-out-the-vote machine on voting day, October 14th — all of which saw Hector Bremner eke out a bare victory for the vacant Council seat, and saw two outstanding candidates in Christopher Richardson and Rob McDowell go down to defeat at School Board, as the last returns were reported to the Chief Electoral Officer at Vancouver City Hall.

The one bright light on the NPA campaign, and a person everyone in the NPA was enthused about: Mike Wilson, Hector Bremner’s longtime friend and political associate and Bremner’s 2017 Vancouver by-election campaign manager, about whom freelance journalist Bob Mackin has written, “Bremner is vice-president at veteran BC Liberal backroomer Norman Stowe’s Pace Group and has Mark Marissen and Mike Wilson in his backroom. Marissen is the ex-husband of ex-Premier Christy Clark and was on the inner-circle of the party’s disastrous 2017 campaign. Wilson is the former business partner of veteran BC Liberal and Vision message maker Don Millar at the FD Element advertising agency, which scored several no-bid contracts from Robertson’s office and set-up a pro-Vision blog called Civic Scene.” All said, Mike Wilson emerged as an NPA star-on-the-rise during the course of the 2017 by-election, and is a person whose career B.C. politicos will be sure to follow going forward.

A bitterly low voter turnout of 10.99% didn’t help matters for the NPA, either. Once a poll-by-poll breakdown is completed by Vancouver City Clerk Janice MacKenzie (who was also the Chief By-Election Officer), results will likely show a depressed voter turnout in the traditional NPA strongholds of Arbutus Ridge, Yaletown, Dunbar, Kerrisdale, Shaughnessy and Point Grey.

There were several good (and a few not-so-good) results and stories in the 2017 Vancouver City Council and Vancouver School by-election.
Let’s start with the two most important outcomes of the by-election …

Jean Swanson, the socialist, housing activist, revolutionary candidate running for a seat on Vancouver City Council, the only non-neoliberal candidate who put their name forward for the vacant Vancouver City Council seat, the candidate who ran on a platform of free transit, a rent freeze and a mansion tax that would raise $200 million annually to build housing for the most vulnerable among our citizens nearly took the prize on Saturday night, or the whole mcgillicuddy (as VanRamblings’ mother used to say), reliant on a message of real, palpable change for the most vulnerable among us (renters, seniors, habitués of the DTES, the working poor, single parents), with the single most energized, organized, vibrantly alive, directed, enthusiastic, broad cross-section of activists election team — constituting everyone from humanist intellectual and community activist Daniel Tseghay, the heart-filled ‘gets things done and always remains positive, directed and action-oriented’ DTES activist Wendy Pedersen, to the good folks long involved on Vancouver’s ‘left front’, as principled a group of folks as you’d ever want to meet and work with (Tristan Markle, Maria Wallstam and Nathan Crompton, just to name three key activists), former rabble.ca editor and current editor with the non-sectarian, progressive Canadian journal, Richochet, the co-founder of the late, lamented, Vancouver-based Seven Oaks magazine (with his best friend, the entirely tremendous writer, author, comedian, University of British Columbia writing instructor, and incredibly articulate and heart-filled, clear-minded political activist, Charles “Charlie” Demers), father and husband and means-to-make-a-difference Derrick O’Keefe, as well as Riaz Behra — longtime Vancouver political activist and VanRamblings friend and political associate, a co-founder of The Left Front Collective, and another person who means-to-get-things-done, who worked night-and-day on Jean Swanson’s campaign, organizing marches, raising funds, assiduously working the line-ups outside the Vancouver International Film Festival venues, and everything and anything that needed to get done to ensure a victory for Jean Swanson, on October 14th, by-election voting day.
Jean Swanson might very well have won on Saturday night were it not for the misguided candidacy of OneCity Vancouver’s Judy Graves, subject matter we’ll explore in Part Two of VanRamblings’ 2017 Vancouver civic by-election wrap-up coverage.
Part Three of our by-election wrap up will offer insight into the incoming Board of Education trustee contingent at the Vancouver School Board.

Vancouver School Board trustee Carrie Bercic with her daughter, Sarah and son, Jordan

On an otherwise disappointing Saturday evening, Vancouver’s election day bright light is the woman you see pictured above with her children, the incredibly wonderful, bright, heart-filled, tough and tough-minded, informed, community activist, involved, humane, kind, generous, loved by everyone who has ever had the privilege of meeting or working with her, who just celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary to her just as incredible husband, John, a public education activist extraordinaire, and the first elected public official for Vancouver’s nascent OneCity Vancouver civic party, your voice around the Vancouver School Board table — the incredibly lovely (c’mon now, everyone knows it to be the truth) Carrie Bercic.
If you haven’t read Ms. Bercic’s commentary in The Straight, you oughta do so now. Ms. Bercic and her came-so-close-to-being-elected OneCity Vancouver running mate, Erica Jaaf — who, together, were the dynamic duo among the 19 candidates for Vancouver School Board — ran on an activist platform of neighbourhood school preservation (where the NPA wanted to close 11 Vancouver schools this past term, as per a recommendation from VSB staff, which thankfully didn’t pass given last November’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling re-instating the 2001 BCTF collective agreement torn up by ex-Premier and former B.C. Liberal [mis]-Education Minister Christy Clark) — because neighbourhood schools are the heart of a vibrant, diverse, inclusive, healthy & well-educated community.
Carrie Bercic: working with provincial Minister for Social Development and Poverty Reduction, Shane Simpson, and his absolutely outstanding ‘can do’ Parliamentary Secretary for Poverty Reduction, Mable Elmore, to ensure that no child goes to school hungry. Check. Working with provincial Minister of Education Rob Fleming to ensure that Vancouver schools requiring seismic upgrading or replacement occurs (much) sooner than later. Check.
Restoration of the all-important VSB band & strings programmes. Check.
Working collaboratively with her fellow Board of Education trustees to ensure that the Vancouver School Board integrates community input and representation in decisions taken by the Board, ensuring that the voices of LGBTQ2S folks, cultural communities, urban Indigenous peoples, those with disabilities, women, people living in poverty, and other marginalized communities are heard loud and clear, while working to end social, political, and economic injustice, and ensuring that when new School Board initiatives are in their nascent planning phase the communities most affected by decisions taken at the Board table will be heard, while ensuring that parents and students and the community-at-large have the power to impact on how those decisions are made, and finally implemented. Check.
Vancouver voters got one thing very right on October 14th: 10.99% of Vancouver’s most engaged political citizenry heard Carrie Bercic’s clarion message of inclusivity, public education advocacy, reconciliation with our First Nations peoples (and our students enrolled in the Vancouver school system) to ensure the academic and social success of our indigenous students, and her commitment to ensuring the safety and preservation of our neighbourhood schools loud and clear, and on Saturday, October 14th cast their ballot for their advocate at the School Board table.
Congratulations to all those engaged citizens of conscience who cast a ballot for Carrie Bercic, and congratulations to Carrie Bercic herself for a hard-fought, well-deserved victory at the polls this past Saturday night.
Part Two of VanRamblings’ ‘by-election wrap-up’ may be found here.

2017 Vancouver By-Election: Christy Clark’s Revenge

October 13, 2017BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

PART ONE: VANCOUVER CITY COUNCIL
For the very, very few of you out there who give a tinker’s damn about the outcome of Vancouver’s 2017 City Council / School Board by-election, the results of which will be broadcast late on Saturday evening, October 14th: the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association (NPA) will sweep to a massive victory, both at Council — where Hector Bremner will ascend to Vancouver City Council — and at the Vancouver School Board, where NPA candidates Fraser Ballantyne, Lisa Dominato, Julian Prieto, Christopher Richardson and Rob McDowell will find themselves celebrating long, long, long into the wee and early morning hours of Sunday, October 15th.
Why is that, you ask? Well, dear and cherished VanRamblings reader …

The NPA were the only functioning political entity in the 2017 Vancouver by-election with a well-organized political machine. Which is to say, the NPA campaign was well-funded (much better funded than any other campaign), conducted daily burmashaves — you know, where candidates stand along the street or at the entrance or exit to bridges or viaducts madly waving signs for their candidature, employed an effective door knocking campaign in the polling areas where they secured more than 50% of the vote in the 2014 municipal election (read: Arbutus Ridge, Yaletown, Dunbar, West Point Grey, Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale — the only neighbourhoods where the NPA did at all well, and where voters got out in droves to protect their class interests and cast a ballot for NPA candidates), and drove a well-funded social media and expensive advertising campaign to help ensure their victory on October 14th.
Most of the by-election candidates / campaigns were downright verklempt at the probability of an overwhelming NPA victory come Saturday evening, but none more so than the woebegone folks associated with the Vision Vancouver campaign, who found at the door that the 2017 Vancouver city by-election (and this tragically applies to School Board, as well) has emerged as a referendum on the administration of Gregor Robertson. Turns out the right and the left have proven effective at the demonization of the Mayor and his Vision Vancouver party — reasonably, on Saturday night, voters can expect 7% to 10% support for sacrificial lamb Vision Vancouver candidate, Diego Cardona. Anger. There’s nothing like it as a motivating force.
Underfunded, untargeted campaigns by Vision Vancouver, OneCity, COPE and the Greens. The good folks at One City Vancouver have a great candidate for Council in homeless advocate Judy Graves, and two of the strongest candidates for School Board in the spectacularly grounded and bright (not to mention, informed) Carrie Bercic and Erica Jaaf — but who among the electorate knows who they are? Not many. OneCity has a tough road to hoe in electing candidates given that they have no elected presence at the municipal level. The Greens are in somewhat better shape, but apart from former VSB trustee Janet Fraser — who will secure support at the polls from both the right and the left, and could very well emerge as the top vote-getter for School Board come Saturday night — the prospects for the Greens are dire.
A dastardly, disreputable bullying campaign of disinformation by the NPA would seem to have played right into the “throw the bums out” mood of the electorate, and as such will ensure their victory on Saturday night. And let’s not forget, either, the red hot anger of the provincial Liberals for both Vision Vancouver and the Vancouver electorate in leading the charge against the Christy Clark government. Not for no reason has Hector Bremner — longtime executive assistant to current BC Liberal party interim leader, Rich Coleman — emerged as the NPA candidate. If you harbour any illusion whatsoever that the NPA is not the BC Liberal farm team, Mr. Bremner’s candidacy ought to give paid to that notion.
Make no mistake, this is a payback election, Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberal party’s revenge on the Vancouver electorate for turfing them from power in Victoria, a feeling that is only exacerbated by John Horgan choosing Geoff Meggs as his Chief of Staff. Why it is that Vancouverites — who overwhelmingly voted for the progressive forces of the NDP in May’s provincial election — would allow the B.C. Liberal farm team to assume power at School Board, and elect a B.C. Liberal apparatchik at City Council beggars belief, but it’s going to happen. C’est la vie.

All of the above said, the 2017 Vancouver City Council by-election result carries little weight politically, given that whoever is elected to Council on Saturday night to fill the vacancy created when Vision Vancouver City Councillor Geoff Meggs resigned his seat to take on the job as Chief of Staff to Premier John Horgan will not affect the majority that Vision Vancouver will continue to hold municipally — Vision Vancouver, whatever the outcome, will continue as the majority party at City Hall, with six of eleven decisive votes (including that of the Mayor) at Vancouver City Council.

The success of the respective campaigns in the 2017 Vancouver by-election (this applies both to Council and School Board) will occur as a function of voter turnout. The Justason Research poll above — even if it is a month and a half out of date — could in fact be right … if, and only if, voters supporting the Greens’ entirely tremendous Pete Fry, or OneCity’s Judy Graves, or Jean Swanson’s invigorating, well-organized grassroots and near revolutionary community-based campaign for Council turn out in droves.
Sad to say, in this era of Trumpian dysfunction, and an ‘enemy of their own class interests’ anomie among the voting populace that almost beggars belief (honestly, it’s as if we’re living in some perverse, latter day version of Orwell’s 1984) voter suppression would seem to be the order of the day. Former Vancouver School Board Chair Patti Bacchus posited in her column in The Straight last week that we’re likely to witness a 10% turnout at the polls once the votes are counted on Saturday night, while Vancouver Courier columnist Mike Klassen was telling anyone who would listen the very same thing. When the left & right agree, you know we’re in trouble.
VanRamblings continues to believe that we’re likely to see a 15% voter turnout — as we’ve suggested previously, a 7% turnout on Vancouver’s eastside, with a 10% turnout in the West End and Kitsilano neighbourhood, and a 30% or better turnout in the neighbourhoods where the NPA has traditionally done very well. We, of course, hope we’re wrong, and that the 20% – 25% voter turnout posited by Vancouver’s City Clerk proves to be the case. But we don’t think so.
VanRamblings has made our support of Jean Swanson well known, and we’re pretty darned enthusiastic about Pete Fry’s candidacy, as well.
The tale will be told on Saturday night.

Make sure that you get out to vote on Saturday, if you haven’t already cast your ballot at the Advance Polls that were held on October 4th and 10th at Vancouver City Hall. Wondering where to cast your ballot? Just click on this link to be taken to the Vancouver.ca webpage, which will afford you the opportunity to place your address in a box made available to you. After clicking Submit, the locations where you may cast your ballot will come up, in this most crucial of elections (aren’t they all?), particularly the School Board election, where the key issue is democratic and engaged advocacy for student interests vs partisan stasis. Remember: it ain’t over til it’s over.
PART TWO: VANCOUVER SCHOOL BOARD

If you believe that Vision Vancouver at City Council and Vision Vancouver at School Board are one and the same thing: give your head a shake. If you believe the malarkey that it is the Vision Vancouver trustees that were the bullies at School Board, and therefore you will not cast a ballot for the Vision Vancouver candidates for School Board: give your head a shake.
There are only 8 candidates who have placed their names forward in the 2017 Vancouver School Board by-election, who have a well-rounded and informed appreciation of the advocacy role that trustees must perform while sitting as elected Board of Education trustees on the Vancouver School Board, and these persons of conscience (for whom you must vote on Saturday, if you give a good galldarn about public education) are …

Adi Pick. 20 years of age, a graduate of Magee Secondary (where she was the valedictorian in her graduating year), currently enrolled at UBC in her fourth year of studies as an international relations student, Adi Pick emerged as the star in the Vancouver School Board by-election: incredibly bright, articulate, down-to-earth, with an informed and fundamental understanding of all of the issues on which Vancouver school trustees must adjudicate, Ms. Pick gained support across the political spectrum during the course of her candidacy, and simply outshone all other candidates at the two Vancouver School Board all-candidates meetings, with her good humour, her pointed commentary, her reasoned passion, and her unrivaled advocacy for the interests of students.

Sarah Bercic asks you to save a vote for her mom, Carrie, for VSB trustee

Carrie Bercic. The other shining star in the Vancouver School Board candidate firmament, Carrie Bercic is the must, must, must vote in the current VSB by-election. Carrie Bercic has attended every meeting of the Vancouver School Board since 2014. Ms. Bercic has worked with her OneCity colleague Erica Jaaf (another must, must, must vote for in the current VSB by-election) on the Parent Advocacy Network (PAN) Board (they’re both on leave at the moment), has sat as Parent Advisory Chair at both General Wolfe elementary school where her daughter was enrolled, and Parent Advisory Chair at Eric Hamber, where her son Jordan was enrolled. Quite simply, there is no more down-to-earth, better informed, more articulate public education advocate who has put their name forward for a position of trustee at the Vancouver School Board than is the case with Carrie Bercic. You would be doing yourself, and the students enrolled in the Vancouver school system a big, big favour by saving a vote for Carrie Bercic when you go to the polls on Saturday, October 14th.

Make no mistake: VanRamblings wishes for you to cast a ballot for Adi Pick, Carrie Bercic and her OneCity running mate, Erica Jaaf, COPE’s Diana Day, and every cotton pickin’ one of the incredibly talented, humane, community advocate, Vision Vancouver defenders of public education who have put their names forward to sit as Board of Education trustees on the Vancouver School Board. If you’ve not already, please read VanRamblings’ initial column on the 2017 Vancouver School Board by-election.

From l – r, the entirely tremendous Vision Vancouver school board candidate ‘public education advocacy’ team: newcomer to electoral politics Theodora Lamb, former VSB Chair Mike Lombardi, Ken Clement, Joy Alexander and Allan Wong, each one of whom deserve your vote October 14th.

From l – r, OneCity Vancouver’s Carrie Bercic and Erica Jaaf, and COPE Vancouver’s Diana Day

The eight candidates for Vancouver School Board whose photos you see above — and let’s not forget Adi Pick either, who is most deserving of your vote at the polls on Saturday — are heartily endorsed by VanRamblings and constitute for any caring person who is at all concerned for Vancouver’s and British Columbia’s public education system, the only candidates for Vancouver School Board you should consider when casting your ballot.

You may read Part One of the actual election results column here.

Vancouver Civic By-Election: October 14th. Get Out to Vote!

September 15, 20172017 By-Election, BC Politics, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

From top left: COPE School Board candidate Diana Day, Vision Vancouver Council candidate Diego Cardona and OneCity Council candidate Judy Graves, Green Party school board candidates Dr. Judy Zaichkowsky, Estrellita Gonzalez and Janet Fraser, bottom left, independent (who has been endorsed by COPE) Council candidate Jean Swanson, and in the next frame OneCity school board candidates Carrie Bercic and Erica Jaaf (both of whom deserve your vote), with NPA candidate for Council Hector Bremner below them, bottom right, Vancouver Green Party candidate for Council, Pete Fry.

From l – r, the Vision Vancouver school board candidate team (standing with Mayor Gregor Robertson, pictured in the middle): Mike Lombardi, newcomer to electoral politics Theodora Lamb, Joy Alexander, Allan Wong and Ken Clement, each one of whom deserve your vote on October 14th.

On October 14th, Vancouver residents go to the polls in a city by-election to vote for a City Council candidate to replace Geoff Meggs, who resigned his seat on Council to become Premier John Horgan’s Chief of Staff.
In addition, voters will be given the opportunity to elect nine trustees to the Vancouver School Board (VSB), the former members of which were fired by the BC Liberal government last October 17th, allegedly for failing to pass a budget for the school year — which wrongheaded Liberal government decision was more about morbid, corrupt and anti-democratic politics as practiced by the Christy Clark government of the day, and much less to do with any sort of wrongdoing on the part of the then VSB school trustees.
Today, VanRamblings will offer a cursory look at the candidates for Vancouver City Council, with reflective commentary on their prospects.

In the main, the fight for a seat on Vancouver City Council is in its essence a three-way fight between Vancouver Non-Partisan Association candidate Hector Bremner, a former executive assistant to current interim provincial Liberal party leader Rich Coleman; Pete Fry, a veteran community activist and the Jane Jacobs-like ‘slow growth’, neighbourhood-centred ‘city building’ Vancouver Green Party candidate, whose ascension to Council would provide the current Green Party member of Council, Adriane Carr, a needed seconder for the motions she places before Vancouver City Council; and in a neck-and neck race for the vacant Council seat, Order of Canada recipient Jean Swanson, the principled candidate of substantive and meaningful change whose clarion voice we very much need on Council.
Longtime homeless advocate Judy Graves is the OneCity candidate for the vacant Council seat, while 21-year-old Diego Cardona was appointed as the Vision Vancouver candidate to challenge for the current vacant seat on Council. Although both Ms. Graves and Mr. Cardona are fine people, truth to tell there’s a scathing and vicious takedown / whisper campaign (about which we may or not write about another day) that is being waged against both Ms. Graves and Mr. Cardona that makes it all but impossible for either candidate to secure enough of the ‘up for grabs’ vote for either candidate to be considered serious contenders for vacant Council seat. Alas …

As Charlie Smith recently wrote in the Georgia Straight, Vancouver Non-Partisan candidate for Council Hector Bremner (pictured above) is the candidate to beat in the upcoming October 14th by-election vote. Why?
Well, in addition to what Charlie has written, Mr. Bremner (or as he’s more popularly known among his NPA confrères, the ‘parachute candidate’) has the full weight of the provincial Liberal party behind him (from October 2014 to December 2015, Mr. Bremner was Executive Assistant to provincial Liberal minister and current interim party leader Rich Coleman, responsible for natural gas development).
Now, Mr. Bremner’s LinkedIn profile reports that Mr. Bremner was also responsible for housing (Mr. Coleman was the housing minister in the previous government), but sources tells VanRamblings that simply isn’t the case and Mr. Bremner was focused solely on the LNG file.
According to other sources within the NPA, in support of Mr. Bremner the provincial Liberals have supplied to the NPA their entire list of ‘marks’ (Vancouver-based provincial Liberal supporters), which data when combined with the NPA ‘marks’ from the 2014 Vancouver municipal election (people who put up signs, donated monies, volunteered and otherwise indicated strong support for the NPA) provides Mr. Bremner with a reliable list of strong NPA supporters on which his campaign might laser focus their resources and attention, each vote from whom Mr. Bremner intends to get out to either the advance polls, or on voting day, October 14th.
And in their class interest (which is to say, not yours and my interests) those supporters are numerous, well-heeled and actually get out to vote.
That the core NPA / provincial Liberal vote resides in Kerrisdale, Shaughnessy, West Point Grey, Dunbar and Yaletown — in which neighbourhoods there was up to a 74% turnout of voters, with up to 74% of the vote going to the NPA in 2014 in these neighbourhoods —&#32whereas in areas like Grandview-Woodlands the turnout was only 20% of eligible voters, with only 13% of the vote going to the NPA (Vision Vancouver secured 67.9% of the vote in this eastside neighbourhood) —&#32means that the NPA has pretty much written off voters in 18 of Vancouver’s 24 neighbourhoods as they mount their 2017 by-election campaign, although they will dedicate resources to polling ‘stations’ in the 18 neighbourhoods across the city where they did well in 2014’s Vancouver municipal election.
As Tyler Michaels, by-election campaign manager for OneCity reminded VanRamblings last evening, historically only 33% of residents voting in a general municipal election turn out to vote in a by-election (a record 43.4% of eligible voters in Vancouver turned out to the polls in 2014), which means that all parties putting candidates forward in the 2017 Vancouver by-election expect only a 14% turnout at the polls on October 14th.
Hector Bremner and the NPA are focusing solely on their key constituent neighbourhoods, where they expect an up to 25% turnout, as opposed to 7% – 17% in all other Vancouver neighbourhoods. In 2017, prospects for an electoral victory are a numbers game, and sad to say success augurs well for the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, the BC Liberal farm team.

The Green Party of Vancouver’s Pete Fry has the highest profile of any of the candidates vying for a seat on Council in the 2017 by-election. As a provincial Green Party by-election candidate in February 2016 and a 2014 Vancouver municipal Green Party candidate, Pete Fry is a known quantity, and a popular and well-respected Vancouver politico, with broad support in neighbourhoods across the city, as well as the only ‘city building’ candidate: green-friendly low-form development in neighbourhoods, green-friendly at-grade transit development, and as Pete has written about his core issues …

“housing affordability, income disparity, the Downtown Eastside, homelessness, communities under threat, red tape and a de-spirited micro-managed City Hall staff, short term rentals, bogus planning processes — and of course, that soft spot for corruption: the overt financial influence that the real estate industry has over the two big developer parties that run our city, and a commitment to a fairer and more equitable city where all Vancouver citizens might thrive.”

Green Party Councillor Adriane Carr needs a seconder for her motions on Council; Pete is that seconder. Pete is a great communicator of untold resonance and empathy, and as a lifelong grassroots community organizer has committed to responding to the calls and correspondence from every constituent who contacts his office (as COPE Councillor Tim Louis did for years), has committed to working with the vibrant and responsive Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods (with representation from all 23 neighbourhoods in Vancouver), while working with community centre, neighbourhood, resident and advocacy associations that span the breadth of our too often beleaguered pacific paradise by the tranquil ocean.
The secret to Pete’s success? You. Vote for Pete Fry on October 14th.

To paraphrase late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy in his eulogy for his brother Bobby, “Some women see things as they are and say why? Jean Swanson dreams things that never were and says why not?” Or as Hillary Clinton averred in her 1971 commencement address at Wellesley, “Some see politics as the art of the possible. I see politics as the art of achieving the impossible. And those are the things I very much intend to get done.”
With broad support from progressive peoples across our city, Jean Swanson’s is the candidacy that could spark real and palpable change for the vast majority of citizens who reside in Vancouver, with a platform that promises that …
Early in her term, as a newly elected Councillor to Vancouver City Council, Jean Swanson will submit a motion to Council to …

Officially adopt the position that Vancouver City Council will work to ensure the implementation of a 0% rent increase for tenants over the next four years, while working with the new NDP government to ensure that rent freeze legislation will be introduced during the 2018 sitting of the BC legislature, ensuring that such legislation would prevent landlords from circumventing the Rent Freeze;
Grant renovation permits to landlords only if they demonstrate that any tenants forced to vacate will be provided the opportunity to return at previous rents;
Ensure that the city start immediate production of 2,138 units of modular housing on city owned lots, housing that would be available to singles, families and couples as temporary housing pending provincial construction of new co-operative and resident-managed social housing;
Hold a city-wide door-to-door voter registration for the 2018 city election, ensuring that renters, indigenous people and other racialized groups, as well as permanent residents, can vote in the next municipal election;
Reduce the police budget by 2%, turning the $5 million savings over to investment in community services that promote social justice;
Work towards implementation of a $5 a month transit pass for low-income Vancouver residents, similar to the programme successfully implemented by Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi;
Acknowledge that ‘No One is Illegal’ by expanding and enhancing Vancouver’s designation as a Sanctuary City by implementing city policies that would ensure that VPD officers do not report Vancouver citizens to immigration and Border Services.

You know, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when COPE City Councillor Harry Rankin was the top vote-getter, election in and election out, year after year and for decades, with his COPE cohorts Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen and and Bruce Yorke finding themselves not only being re-elected term after term after term, but emerging as the most popular councillors at City Hall, with broad support in every neighbourhood across the city, especially in Dunbar, Point Grey and Kerrisdale, in times that were less partisan and less mean, and where each and every resident in Vancouver cared about the welfare of all citizens, and recognized theirs and our collective responsibility to care for the most vulnerable among us.
Jean Swanson’s independent candidacy for Vancouver City Council is a return to the future, harkening back to a simpler and a better time, and in 2017 for all persons of conscience Jean Swanson is the only candidate for the vacant seat on Council who represents a truly revolutionary change that would mean a fairer and more just society for all, sooner rather than later.
Jean Swanson’s is the compelling voice of change that you want and need to hear on Vancouver City Council. Vote for Jean Swanson October 14th.