Category Archives: BC Politics

Decision 2014: Politics and Class Warfare in Vancouver, Part 1

October 27, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Under the Non-Partisan Association administration of Mayor Sam Sullivan, a long and divisive civic strike of Vancouver’s inside, outside, and library workers began on July 26, 2007, dubbed “Sam’s Strike” by the union.
The strike lasted 88 days.

2007 Vancouver civic strike

The unions, mustered by CUPE, blamed Sullivan’s intransigence at the bargaining table for prolonging the strike, the union citing that the city’s failing to table a written counteroffer as evidence of the city’s bad faith.
Eventually, a mediator was called in, who recommended 17.5% [21% compounded] in a five-year contract, which was the amount accepted by all the other municipalities in Metro Vancouver. When two of the civic unions rejected the recommendation, public support collapsed; within a week a new vote by the three civic unions, with 1% more added to the contract than was the case across Metro Vancouver, and a deal was accepted.
In fact, the strike was purposefully prolonged by then CUPE 15 President Paul Faoro to create animus for the NPA, such ill-feeling that might lead to a victory for the nascent Vision Vancouver civic party. During the course of the strike, Mike Magee, Geoff Meggs and Paul Faoro struck a deal — with the election of a Vision Vancouver civic government, Vision would guarantee to CUPE that the city would pull out of the regional labour relations bureau.
Daniel Fontaine, writing in CityCaucus, wrote about “the deal”, in an October 29, 2009 article titled, “Geoff Meggs hands CUPE a major victory.”
In mid-2011, longtime CUPE 15 President Paul Faoro once again sat down with now Chief of Staff to the Mayor, Mike Magee, and first-term Vision Vancouver City Councillor, Geoff Meggs.
The deal that was struck this time was this: the City of Vancouver would guarantee to CUPE the City would settle an upcoming 3-year contract at 9%, as they had with the VPD and the firefighters. In fact, CUPE settled for 6.87%, with strict “no contracting out” provisions, an increase in benefits & pension plan provisions, the contract now coming in at 9%, as promised.
Once the deal was done, CUPE committed to spending $1.5 million to get Vision Vancouver re-elected; that’s $1.5 million not as a direct, accountable donation, but $1.5 million that would be off-the-books. As elucidated in Bob Mackin’s article in the Vancouver Courier, donations to Vision Vancouver from CUPE topped $245,250 — and that figure doesn’t include the $63,000 donation from the HEU, a CUPE sister union.
Vision Vancouver turned over to CUPE their 16,000-name membership list. CUPE has a master list of 45,000 Union members who live in the City of Vancouver. CUPE hired 1,600 workers to get the vote out for Vision Vancouver, running a fear campaign against the NPA, “the party that brought you ‘Sam’s Strike’, will contract out jobs at City Hall, put city workers on the bricks, and as the Liberals’ farm team will set the tone to allow the Liberals to keep to their ‘0-0-0‘ mandate.”

We all know how the last election went: in 2011, almost every one on the 45,000-strong Union member list came out to cast a ballot for Vision, as was the case with the 16,000-strong Vision Vancouver membership list.
Kirk LaPointe and the Non-Partisan Association’s job in 2014 is to steal away 5,000 to 8,000 Union votes from Vision, by assuring these union members that the NPA will negotiate a fair contract with city workers, that an NPA administration does not intend to contract out jobs, and that although an NPA administration will not negotiate side deals with CUPE and other unions, an NPA administration would settle with its workers for no less than the standard union contract agreed to across Metro Vancouver.
With all due respect to Non-Partisan Association campaign manager, Doug Leung, and the affable and very bright Kirk LaPointe, the NPA’s number one job between now and election day, if the NPA wants to secure victory on November 15th, is to garner a fair percentage of the Union vote.
In terms of securing a portion of the union vote, Kirk LaPointe had a bad week last week. In a Province newspaper opinion piece response to Bob Mackin’s article, titled “Vision Vancouver’s cash-for-jobs deal with city union is corrupt”, LaPointe wrote …

Vision Coun. Geoff Meggs, speaking for Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, recently told a meeting of CUPE Local 1004 that the mayor was committing to not contract out any other city jobs. In turn, Vision was given financial and political support. No wonder Vancouverites don’t trust city hall under Vision. Corruption corrodes confidence and this commitment smacks of political backroom deals of yesteryear.

It puts Vision’s interests ahead of the city’s and taxpayers.

Being clearly beholden to the city’s workers right now is an irresponsible service to the city. The union is approaching contract discussions, and any early definition of the city’s bargaining position is a breach of fiduciary duty.

It gives away the store.

Mr. LaPointe, guess how much Union members care about “giving away the store”? About as much as Mike Magee, and the Vision folks, want to see an overwhelming NPA majority victory come late evening November 15th.

Union workers, like all workers, already feel hard done by, that they’re not getting their piece of the pie, that the corporate 1% (which is how your opposition Vision Vancouver opponents have defined you) are ever-intent on grinding the interests of workers into the ground.
Kirk LaPointe and the Non-Partisan Association never, ever want to play into that narrative. Rather, if the NPA want to win this election, they must present Kirk LaPointe in much the way Naheed Nenshi, Calgary’s mayor, was presented when he won back-to-back terms in the mayor’s office.
The Non-Partisan Association, if they’re interested in victory at all, would want ensure that their mayoralty candidate is defined as, “Kirk LaPointe, a Mayor For All The People, Union Members, Our Multi-Cultural Population, Teachers, Health Care Workers, The Poor and the Downtrodden, Children Who Go To School Hungry Every Morning, A True Man of the People, The Once and True Leader of the West Coast Progressive Purple Revolution.”
In a Globe and Mail article published today, titled “Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson grilled on union at debate”, freelance Vancouver civic affairs writer Frances Bula writes, ” … the Vision Vancouver mayor didn’t have an answer when he was prodded at the four-candidate debate Sunday about what his party might have promised to a major city union in exchange for $102,000 in campaign donations.”
There was a back-and-forth between Gregor Robertson and the NPA mayoralty candidate, Kirk LaPointe, who lambasted the mayor for tying “the hands of the city in the next round of bargaining” with the outside workers, whose contract is due to expire in December of 2015.” Yada, yada, yada.

Bula goes on to write that Robertson, “during the debate and in a scrum afterward, would not acknowledge that the party has a long-standing commitment to maintaining the contracting out of city services at current levels, even though Mr. Meggs has said it does.” No kidding. It’s not as if Mike Magee, Geoff Meggs and Paul Faoro have ever shared the information with the Hollyhock cult king of Vancouver (oh sorry, “Mayor”) — why would they, “Mayor” Robertson is only a sorta handsome sock puppet?
Vision Vancouver relies on four distinct voting blocs as its base of support: union members, a rabidly engaged cycling community, voters of Chinese descent, and members of the LGBTQ community, each of which voting group Vision Vancouver pursues with not a small degree of abandon.

The massive vote of union workers who reside in Vancouver, mustered by former CUPE 15 (City Hall inside workers) President, and current CUPE BC Secretary-Treasurer, Paul Faoro, represents the largest constituency of voter support for Vision Vancouver — given such, there is virtually no end to which Vision will go, no reasonable promise that Vision is not prepared to make, to secure their largest and most crucial-to-their-re-election vote.
Although not for Mr. Juice Boy / Sock Puppet / Hollyhock cult boy (aka “The Mayor”), Vision Vancouver’s raison d’être — well, at least Geoff Meggs’ raison d’être — revolves around a rejection of the contemporary economic notion of the race to the bottom, where business and government — think the provincial Liberals or the federal Conservatives — set about to grind workers’ economic interests into the ground. In B.C., and in most other North American jurisdictions, we’ve been down so long it looks like up.

In rejecting the neo-liberal notion of the race to the bottom, Vision Vancouver has set about to create the economic conditions where they will ensure their support for, first, the economic interests of their own city workers, and globally, the economic interests of workers’ across the province. Here’s how Vision Vancouver expresses their contemporary version of the Wobblies’ ‘workers of the world unite’ narrative …

“We’ve got your backs, we know you have families to care for, bills to pay, that as the cost of living continues to rise, you deserve a fair wage increase when next you bargain for a new contract, we know how important your job is to you, how important your job is to your family, and we here today commit to you that under a Vision Vancouver civic administration city worker jobs will not be contracted out.”

Vision Vancouver, then, has announced a central tenet of their re-election platform, even if this particular aspect of the platform is surreptitious in its application, and held from the view of the voting electorate of the city.

There are a great many aspects of Vision Vancouver’s time in power that may be criticized with fulsomeness. A Vision Vancouver civic administration protecting the economic interests of city workers is not one of them.
Geoff Meggs has spent a good deal of his life sitting in Marxist reading rooms, along with his contemporaries.
Kirk LaPointe and his Non-Partisan Association colleagues, naïfs that they are, wouldn’t know a Marxist reading group if it smacked them upside the head. And, really, when you get down it, the acceptance of such notion is, well, kind of sweet (in a naive and somewhat becoming, and innocent way).

Still and all, for better or for worse (and much to the chagrin of VanRamblings), the Non-Partisan Association seems to have found a winning election issue — corruption at Vancouver City Hall, the promise to city workers that the public service in the employ of the city will be treated fairly at the bargaining table when the next contract is negotiated.
Somehow, in our contemporary economic climate, and in accord with the accepted economic notion of the race to the bottom, City of Vancouver workers getting a fair shake for themselves and for their families is a terrible thing, an egregious breach of political ethics — as one might imagine, an issue in this election that has found resonance with the electorate — and the one, sustaining election issue that may lead to the ignominious defeat of Vision Vancouver at the polls, come the evening of November 15th.
We live in strange, and perilous, social and economic times, indeed.

Decision 2014: New ideas, candidates, are good for democracy

October 25, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The following is an October 23rd editorial in The Province newspaper.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision strategists clearly think that pointing out their main opponent’s lack of elected experience is a winning strategy. Robertson and other Vision politicians have repeated the point of late, including during Wednesday’s mayoral debate at Langara College when Robertson finally deigned to face off against Kirk LaPointe of the NPA. But it demonstrates, as is too often the case with Vision, real arrogance that voters should really think about.

LaPointe may not have been elected to office before but as a senior journalist, CBC ombudsman and adjunct professor at UBC he’s been involved in politics and thinking about political issues for a lot longer than Robertson.

What’s the mayor saying? That it is ridiculous for LaPointe or other newbies to run for office? That only elected politicians have enough brains or ideas to be elected? If that’s true, what expertise did Robertson bring to the mayor’s job when he was first elected after short careers as a juice maker and opposition MLA?

LaPointe is raising issues that many Vancouverites are concerned about — the appalling traffic, secrecy at city hall, the lack of real public consultation in city planning and Vision’s focus on issues outside the city’s mandate. He may not have detailed solutions yet to all those issues, but Robertson either has none, doesn’t care or is the source of the problems.

Democracy thrives on new ideas and new people; Robertson sounds like he believes he has some divine right to rule. The mayor should stop attacking LaPointe’s résumé and start debating the issues.

The Province newspaper’s editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@theprovince.com. Letters to the editor, specifically on the editorial above, can be sent to provletters@theprovince.com.

A Brief History of Vancouver’s Affordable Housing Movement

October 21, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Canadians hold this axiom true: we are our brother’s (and sister’s) keeper.
In Canada, we live in a compassionate society, where the common good is the responsibility of all. Our socialized medical system is world class, as is our education system. Government fulfills its responsibility to provide a functioning judiciary that ensures public safety, an active and well-functioning transportation system meets the needs of all sectors of our society, and we strive to care for those among us who are most in need.

In Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, we satisfy our needs in a well-defined order. At the pinnacle of Maslow’s pyramid? Shelter. With our need for food, shelter, good health, safety and community met, the conditions are present where we might lead a fulfilling, purposeful life.

In post-WWII Canadian society, as was expressed in our earlier post on development, the need for shelter was met, predominantly, through the construction of single-detached family homes. In the 1960s, Canadian society sought to ensure the provision of shelter for those most in need, as federal and provincial governments moved to build non-market housing.

When urban social housing projects like Raycam in Vancouver, and Regent Park in Toronto proved a ghetto-ized failure, at the behest of the federal government, a commission was struck to develop a ‘made in Canada’ solution to meet the need to house not just the indigent population, but members of the creative class, low-wage workers & single-parent families.

Through amendments to the National Housing Act, in the early 1970s the federal government launched the first programme to develop housing co-operatives, creating more than 60,000 non-market homes in co-ops across our land. Housing co-operatives (“co-ops”) provide a place for people to live. In 2014, there are currently more than 2,500 housing co-ops across Canada, housing more than 131,000 community homeowners.

Housing co-operatives come in all sorts of forms and sizes, ranging from collections of townhouses and small, condominium-style buildings with 4 — 20 units, to large apartment-style buildings with hundreds of units. What sets co-ops apart from private rental housing is that they are democratic, community-owned housing developments, where residents take on the full responsibility for making decisions on how the co-op functions, for its finances, its ongoing maintenance, and for its members’ responsibilities.

Phase 2 housing co-ops: co-operative housing built along the south shore of False Creek

Current T.E.A.M. member / architect, and 1972-74 T.E.A.M. Park Board Commissioner, Bill McCreery, has written to VanRamblings stating that the construction of housing co-operatives “was a joint effort on the part of the City (T.EA.M.), federal Liberal minister of the day, Ron Basford (and his Deputy, Peter Oberlander), and Shirley Schmidt, acting for Dave Barrett’s early 1970’s provincial NPD government. This era of intergovernmental co-operation is unprecedented, and it highlights what can be accomplished when it happens. Something we should be striving for today.” Bill goes on to point out that all Phase1 co-ops were 2 or 3 storey townhouses, while Phase2 co-ops, as above, were mostly mid-rise, 4 to 6 storey structures.

Among the first housing co-operatives built in Vancouver were the co-ops along the south shore of False Creek, between Granville Island and the Cambie Street bridge. With the support of the province, under municipal by-law, one-third of all large-scale housing development would be housing co-operatives — which is to say, one out of every three buildings along False Creek’s south shore is a housing co-op, as was the case when the construction began in the 1970s, and as it remains to this day.

Government does not own the housing co-operative; rather the co-operative is owned collectively by its members. Almost the sole role of the federal government is to provide surety to the financial institutions that lend the monies to the members of the co-operative for the purchase of land and construction of the housing. No housing co-operative in Canada has ever declared bankruptcy — the federal government has never had to assume the financial obligations of housing co-op members, at any time.

No one in a housing co-operative pays more than one-third of their income for their housing, the co-operative model mandating that one-third of the members of the co-op will receive full subsidy out of the operating funds of the co-op, while another third are granted a partial subsidy, the remaining one-third of members required to pay the low-end of market housing rate.

Co-op members pay no more than 30% of their income for housing.

Note should be made that a significant portion of housing units in a co-operative housing complex are set aside for 3-bedroom, affordable family housing — meeting the most pressing need of young families who have been unable to find suitable homes to raise their children in a safe and secure community environment, in Vancouver’s woefully underserved housing market for our city’s burgeoning population of young families.

Generally, the one-third of members on deep subsidy consist of single parents, pensioners and members of the disability community. The middle third are generally comprised of low-wage income earners, and members of the creative class (writers, artists). The final third, that part of the co-operative membership who pay the low-end-of-market rate are comprised of a broad cross-section of our community, business persons, teachers, and other higher income earners, each one of whom is a person of conscience dedicated to the interests of the community — for being a member of a housing co-op entails work, and a great deal of personal and social responsibility on the part all of the co-operatives’ members.

In the 1970s, in Vancouver and across British Columbia, with the election of Dave Barrett’s NDP provincial government, and the election of the TEAM civic government of Art Phillips, we moved away from the social barbarism of the years of provincial premier WAC Bennett and Vancouver’s misguided mayor, Tom Campbell, into a new, enlightened era of social responsibility.

Co-operative Housing Built By Bosa Development as a Community Amenity Contribution

In the 1980s, with a faltering provincial economy, the social obligation that mandated that one-third of all large-scale housing development consist of housing co-operatives was reduced to one-quarter, or 25%. For instance, when a developer such as BOSA set about to construct the mass of highrises along Main and Quebec avenues between the Georgia Viaduct and Terminal avenue, and as BOSA built 2000 condominium units, the company was required to construct 500 social and housing co-operative units.

In the 1990s, that obligation was reduced to 20%, in the early 2000s to 15%, and under both the NPA administration of Sam Sullivan and during both terms of the Gregor Robertson-led Vision Vancouver civic administration, the obligation of developers to construct social housing units and housing co-operatives was eliminated entirely. Thus, we are left with the affordable housing crisis we face today, and the number one issue on the minds of the electorate in 2014’s Vancouver municipal election.

Back to the Future: Electing a New Vancouver Civic Administration

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Watch the human-scale, informative video on housing co-ops. You’ll be glad you did.

In the 1970s, the TEAM administration of Art Phillips created the Property Endowment Fund (PEF), consisting of the real estate assets of all city-owned property, designated by Mayor Phillips and the Council of the day as a rainy-day fund, a portion of the PEF that might someday be dedicated to the construction of housing for those in need. You’ve probably noticed that it’s not just raining out there, there’s a deluge.

At present, there’s $3½ billion dollars in the Property Endowment Fund — the time has long since past that Vancouver’s civic administration dedicate a portion of the PEF to the construction of housing co-operatives. Why co-operatives, and not COPE’s housing authority? A couple of reasons.

COPE’s housing authority would require a new and costly level of civic administration at City Hall, when there’s already attendant bureaucracies in place that administer housing co-operatives, which are a joint responsibility of the provincial government through its housing agency, B.C. Housing and through its arms-length provincial Agency for Co-operatives, as well as B.C.’s much-heralded and respected Co-operative Housing Federation.

Secondly, housing co-operatives provide a salutary, non-market form of home ownership, where collectively the members of the co-operative assume the day-to-day responsibility for the operation of the co-operative, as we do our own homes. Members of a co-operative are not tenants, we are homeowners, which is to say we are maîtres de notre propre maison.

When the current civic administration approved Jimmy Pattison’s massive development at Drake and Burrard, $42.6 million in community amenity contributions was extracted from the developer, Reliance Holdings. Do you know how much of that $42.6 million was set aside for the construction of social housing, or housing co-operatives? Nada. Going forward affordable housing must be a priority for our civic, provincial and federal governments.

The no-cost to the taxpayer, no cost to a Vancouver municipal administration solution to the affordable housing crisis in our city?

Extract parcels of land from the Property Endowment Fund, lease the land to members of the proposed housing co-operatives (with oversight provided by the provincial government, and the Co-op Housing Federation), and require that no less than 25% of developer Community Amenity Contributions be set aside for the construction of housing co-operatives.

The income derived from the member housing charges is paid to the city, a portion of which is set aside for annual co-op maintenance, for the co-operatives’ replacement reserve fund, for any administrative costs that might be incurred by the co-op, and for property tax paid to the city.

A new Vancouver civic administration must tackle the issue of affordable housing in the city of Vancouver, upon assuming office. To date, Vision Vancouver has proven, alone, not to be up to the task. Let’s change that. A renewed and progressive municipal administration, working with members of the Green Party, OneCity, COPE and the NPA will provide responsive and responsible government at the municipal level.

When you fill out your ballot — at the advance polls, or on November 15th — vote for a new Vancouver civic administration: vote Green Party of Vancouver, vote Vision Vancouver and OneCity Vancouver, and vote for the candidates who are committed to the provision of social and Co-op housing. Vote for COPE, the Green Party’s Adriane Carr, Pete Fry and Cleta Brown, One City’s RJ Aquino, and Vision Vancouver’s Andrea Reimer and Geoff Meggs, who have dedicated themselves to a community-led solution to Vancouver’s present appalling and dire affordable housing crisis.

Decision 2014: Vote a Vancouver Distaff Slate at the Civic Polls

October 20, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The angry, power-hungry, dissolute male of the human species has made a hash of things, when it comes to the political realm and the common weal.
In Vancouver in 2014, we have two male mayoral candidates in Gregor Robertson and Kirk LaPointe who have set about to beat each other about the head, it is men who are in control of political campaign management in the current election cycle, developers who are all male and union leaders who are also all male who control the bulk of the party campaign financing, as these latter males set about to ensure that you vote the “right way”.
In Vancouver’s dysfunctional, debauched political system, there’s not a lot of principle, and perhaps even a dearth of ethics, in the choices with which we are being confronted when we head to the polls on November 15th.
VanRamblings is here to suggest to you that there is a better way, a more principled path forward in Vancouver’s political realm, where government of good conscience would be all but guaranteed, where consensus and respect and fairness in the political process and for the participants involved in the decision-making process would carry the day, where the disquieting political maelstrom with which we have become all too familiar would finally, once and for all, draw to a salutary and certain-to-be-celebrated close.
VanRamblings’ advice? When you go to the polls on Saturday, November 15th, vote only for the principled, bright, able, capable, insightful, ethical, and outstanding women of conscience who have placed their names on the ballot for Vancouver City Council, for Park Board and for School Board.
Note should be made that one of the side benefits of voting all-women slates on Vancouver’s three civic bodies is that no one party would have a majority — in consequence, in order for governance to take place a working consensus would have to be developed, reason would come to prevail, and the likelihood would be that the decisions that would be taken at Council, Park Board and School Board would, almost inevitably, be very much to the benefit of the broadest cross-section of the Vancouver electorate, and families of every description living in every neighbourhood across our city.

In 2014, Meena Wong has emerged as the only mayoral candidate who will make a difference, as she has advocated for the construction of 4,000 affordable housing units in Vancouver over the course of the next 10 years, raising the monies to pay for COPE’S campaign promise through the imposition of a tax on absentee homeowners, and a renewed focus on the construction of affordable housing, through developer community amenity contributions; advocating, as well, for changes to the Vancouver Charter that would allow both the implementation of a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and putting an end to renovictions in the city of Vancouver.

For Vancouver City Council, there is no better choice than our hardest working City Councillor, Vision Vancouver’s Andrea Reimer. Vote for her colleague Niki Sharma, as well — for there is no more principled candidate for office in 2014 than the incredibly thoughtful and articulate Ms. Sharma.
In the Non-Partisan Association’s Suzanne Scott, voters have discovered a community activist who holds a Ph.D. in Educational Studies from UBC who has emerged as the hardest working candidate for City Council in the current election cycle. In her colleague, the entirely wondrous, hard-working democrat Melissa De Genova, as those who follow Park Board have long been aware, in Melissa voters have a citizen advocate who is without equal.
When it comes to the Green Party of Vancouver, since her election to Council in 2011 there has been no more powerful advocate for the public interest than Adriane Carr. In 2014, vote for her Green Party colleague, Cleta Brown, as well — a retired lawyer and tireless social justice advocate who has impressed with her cogent writing on the political process, and at each of the all-candidates meeting she has attended.
When it comes to marking you ballot in November, cast a vote for Coalition of Progressive Electors’ candidate Gayle Gavin, who in her law practice has advocated for tenants’ rights, won precedent-setting judgments enshrining the rights of disabled persons to dignity, and fought for local food security in the successful campaign to save the UBC farm. Social justice advocate and artist Jennifer O’Keefe — young and principled, a wonderful writer with a clarion vision, and whose energy we very much need on Council — is a must-elect at the polls on November 15th, a voice of hope to ensure a future where fairness becomes a central principle of municipal governance.
In the Vancouver Cedar Party’s Charlene Gunn, voters have heard an unparalleled voice of intelligence and compassion, and have found a slow growth advocate committed to empowering those of us who live across Vancouver’s diverse, engaged neighbourhoods. Service to community has set Vancouver First’s Elena Murgoci apart from her Vancouver First colleagues, a multi-lingual MBA in International Business Management who would well serve the interests of Vancouver citizens.
And let us not forget, either, the Non-Partisan Association’s caucus chair and arts advocate, two-term City Councillor, Elizabeth Ball. Or, Heather Deal, Vision Vancouver’s three-term Councillor, who is Council’s majority party arts advocate, and who was key in the realization of Vancouver’s successful food cart programme.
COPE’s Lisa Barrett, a former Mayor of Bowen Island, impressed at last week’s St. James Hall all-candidates meeting, and her COPE colleague Audrey Siegl has been front-and-centre in the fight against homelessness. Vancouver First’s Mercedes Wong, whose 30-year career in corporate finance and two decades as a residential and commercial realtor, is worthy of your consideration, as an informed advocate on development issues.
The question that is posed most often to VanRamblings in this current Vancouver civic election cycle is, “Who should I vote for, which candidates are worthy of my placing a checkmark beside their name when I cast my votes for Council?” In 2014, the answer is clear: vote for the principled women of conscience running for office in the Vancouver municipal election.

At Vancouver Park Board, the choices are easy: the very able consensus builder, Catherine Evans, and her Vision Vancouver colleagues, Coree Tull and Sammi Jo Rumbaua; the Non-Partisan Association’s Erin Shum and Sarah Kirby-Yung; former Park Board Chair, COPE’s Anita Romaniuk, and one of her colleagues Cease Wyss, or Urooba Jamal. Or, save a vote for independent candidate and Park Board watchdog, Jamie Lee Hamilton.

At School Board, re-electing Patti Bacchus to a third term in office is the easiest decision you’ll have to make in the 2014 Vancouver municipal election. The same is true for the incredibly bright and hardworking Cherie Payne. Newcomer Joy Alexander is also worthy of your consideration as Vision Vancouver’s newest candidate for School Board. The NPA’s Penny Noble and Sandy Sharma are first-rate candidates for School Board, as is COPE’s Diana Day — one of the new must-elects for School Board.
Ms. Day’s COPE School Board candidate colleagues Ilana Shecter, Heidi Nagtegaal and Kombii Nanjalah are more than worthy of your consideration, as well. The Green Party of Vancouver’s Janet Fraser is one of the most talked about education activists seeking office this year —&#32and the word on Ms. Fraser is good, very good, indeed. You’ll also find Vancouver First’s Susan Bhatha’s name is on the ballot, for School Board.

Fuzzy iPhone photo of Public Education Project candidates Jane Bouey and Gwen Giesbrecht

Apart from must-elects Patti Bacchus, Cherie Payne, Joy Alexander, Diana Day and Janet Fraser, by far the most-qualified, hardest working and most committed education activists in the current election cycle are the Public Education Project’s Jane Bouey and Gwen Giesbrecht — who catapulted into the must-elect category the minute they both announced their candidacies for Vancouver School Board. Save two votes for Jane & Gwen.