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.

The Vancouver Election Debate calendar below is dynamic / ever-changing. Click on a debate event for more information on that particular debate.

The Vancouver Election Debate calendar above is entirely the creation of Randy Helten and Stephen Bohus, the publishers of CityHallWatch, and is supplied to VanRamblings as a courtesy to the voters of Vancouver.

One month from today, on Saturday, November 15th, British Columbians will go to the polls to elect City Councils across the province, no current civic election more important than the one taking place in Vancouver.
Before commencing today’s post, a note: flu has felled VanRamblings for much of the past 16 days (it’s still hanging on), which has prejudiced the regimen of daily posts — going forward, I’ll do the best I can to post as frequently possible, given the vestiges of my advanced age and ill health.

First things first. Tonight, it is mandatory that you take time out of your busy schedule to attend an all-important pre-election meeting …

The 2-hour meeting will take place tonight, Wed., October 15th, from 7pm til 9pm, at St. James’ Hall, located on Vancouver’s west side, at 3214 West 10th Avenue. The theme of this evening’s all-important civic meeting: Planning, Development, & Community Engagement: Putting The Community Back Into Community Planning.

Over the past year, the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods has sought to bring together representatives from Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods, in response to a chorus of discontent across our city.

The laudatory principles and goals of the Coalition may be found here.
With one-month to go til Vancouver civic election day, come out to tonight’s meeting to learn about the issues, and to make your voice heard.
Note should be made that there is a competing Town Hall that will take place from 6pm til 8:30pm tonight, at the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre, to be moderated by deposed Vision Vancouver Park Board candidate, Trish Kelly. We could say something about the grimy politics inherent in a Visionite holding a competing all-candidates meeting opposite the long-scheduled Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods civic election meeting — make of that unseemly coincidence what you will.

While VanRamblings is under-the-weather, there remains a plethora of well-conceived, well-written, and engaging blogs where the civically-minded might get their civic affairs / Vancouver municipal election politics fix.

• CityHallWatch. Day in, day out, former Vancouver mayoralty candidate Randy Helten, Stephen Bohus & others have made CityHallWatch the ‘go-to’ place for news on Vancouver’s civic scene. Well-researched, chock full of information you’ll find nowhere else, and clearly a labour of love (for our too often beleaguered city), CityHallWatch is the site you visit for up-to-date news on development in our city and, as they say, “Tools to Engage in Vancouver city decisions.”
• State of Vancouver. Vancouver’s no-nonsense, “I’ve got no time for fools” media eminence gris of Vancouver’s political scene, Frances Bula tells us like it is (but respectfully so) on her incredibly well-researched, and absolutely invaluable State of Vancouver blog. Without a doubt, Vancouver’s hardest working, most insightful civic affairs reporter, Ms. Bula’s State of Vancouver blog is the must-read for aficionados of politics as it’s practiced in the City of Vancouver.
• Civic Lee Speaking. A reporter’s reporter, there ain’t no sacred cows in Jeff Lee’s award-winning reporting on Vancouver’s often tumultuous civic scene — with Jeff, you’re always going to get the straight goods (mixed in with not a little wit, and a flair for writerly prose that is matched only by the indefatigable Ms. Bula). All of us who live in Vancouver are damn lucky to have a respected journalist of the calibre of Jeff Lee covering our civic scene, and reporting out to us.
• Jak’s View. Community organizer and activist, Grandview Woodland advocate, author (2011’s The Drive: A Retail, Social and Political History of Commercial Drive, Vancouver, to 1956, and 2012’s The Encyclopedia of Commercial Drive), and tireless blogger, communicator and passionate democrat, Jak King’s blog, Jak’s View has long been a daily must-read for anyone who gives a tinker’s damn about Vancouver civic affairs democracy (or lack thereof), an always engaging, human scale and informative read.
• 12th and Cambie. My favourite read on Vancouver’s civic scene, the Vancouver Courier’s Mike Howell brings a sense of humour, incredible wit (and a becoming sense of wonderment), in perfect conflation with the reportial expertise and writerly prose ability he shares with Frances Bula and Jeff Lee, to make his always engaging 12th and Cambie a Vancouver civic affairs blog must-read. When writing about Vancouver civic politics becomes too much, you can depend on Mike to inject some much-needed human-scale humour. Thank god for Mike Howell!

Let us not forget, either, veteran reporter and Vancouver Courier political commentator Allen Garr who, for two decades now, has each week provided a cogent analysis of the machinations of Vancouver City Hall politics.
See you all tonight at the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods’ pre-election all-candidates meeting at St. James Hall. If you can’t make tonight’s meeting, not to worry — there are debates galore upcoming.
The Vancouver Election Debate calendar below is dynamic. Click on a debate event for more information on that particular debate.

The Vancouver Election Debate calendar above is entirely the creation of Randy Helten and Stephen Bohus, the publishers of CityHallWatch, and is supplied to VanRamblings as a courtesy to the voters of Vancouver.
The debates calendar is dynamic, and will be updated as Messrs. Helten and Bohus are apprised of new debates. The debate calendar covers all debates leading up to the November 15th Vancouver municipal election.

There’s a coalition of progressive voters coalescing around Kirk LaPointe, the socially progressive Non-Partisan Association candidate for mayor.
For VanRamblings, the most surprising aspect of the 33rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival arises from the dozens of approaches by filmgoers that have been made to us by community activists working across every neighbourhood in the city — folks with whom VanRamblings has worked on countless NDP, COPE and Vision Vancouver electoral campaigns, as well as on community activist projects too numerous to mention — who have, chapter and verse, detailed the egregious anti-parks and recreation, neighbourhood destroying, pro-development, covert, and pharisaic decision-making that has gone on at City Hall and Park Board this past six years under an execrable Vision Vancouver civic administration.
Make no mistake, a well-organized Anyone But Vision movement has begun to form, and almost all of those with whom VanRamblings has engaged are what Andy Yan, a planner and public data analyst with Bing Thom Architects, refers to as engaged voters — those citizens who live along the golden horseshoe, the crescent of big-turnout polls that extends from the Commercial Drive / Grandview Woodland area, through Mount Pleasant to Fairview and Kitsilano, the city’s inner ring of neighbourhoods.
Andy Yan may well be right, but if VanRamblings were to take into account the dozens of infuriated telephone callers, e-mails, texts and direct social media messages we receive each day, dissatisfaction with Vision Vancouver would appear to extend far beyond the golden horseshoe, and well into both the LGBTQ+ and Chinese communities, both of which latter voting groups have indicated they’ll leave Vision Vancouver in droves this election, as they head back to the warming embrace of the Non-Partisan Association.
And let us not forget, either, the rampant and vocal dissatisfaction that has emerged this last term with Vision Vancouver in the Hastings-Sunrise, Dunbar, Killarney, West End, Yaletown and Marpole neighbourhoods.

Among progressive voters, the move to support Kirk LaPointe emerges not out of a lack of support for COPE mayoral candidate Meena Wong, but rather from the realpolitik that Ms. Wong cannot defeat Gregor Robertson.
The progressive voters who’ve contacted VanRamblings by phone and social media, and stopped us on the streets and in coffee shops by the hundreds these past four months want Gregor Robertson and his ne’er-do-well band of Vision Vancouver colleagues gone from the Vancouver civic scene — in Kirk LaPointe, these progressive voters have identified a viable, socially progressive, thinks for himself (one of the salutary comments we hear often) and electable alternative for the mayor’s chair, and a candidacy around whom a growing coalition of progressive voters has formed, an under-the-radar bloc of community-oriented activists who are working in neighbourhoods across our city to ensure that Kirk LaPointe becomes Vancouver’s new mayor late in the evening this upcoming November 15th.

In Toronto, a burgeoning alliance of voters has formed around the mayoralty candidacy of former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader, the once beleaguered John Tory, whose current 49.2% standing in the polls is both testament to his middle-of-the-road, socially liberal candidacy, and more than double that of challengers Doug Ford and Olivia Chow. Make no mistake, the vast majority of Toronto voters want the Ford family out of Metro Toronto civic politics, and everyone from provincial Liberal cabinet ministers to longtime members of the provincial NDP have come out in groundswell support for the socially liberal, fiscally conservative John Tory.
A similar dynamic would appear to be emerging in Vancouver.
In Kirk LaPointe, progressive and engaged voters see a Red Tory, who just as is the case with the seems-certain-to-win Toronto mayoralty candidate John Tory, offers socially liberal programmes, fiscally sound city management, and open and transparent municipal governance.
Imagine, in John Tory and Kirk LaPointe, the two largest English-language speaking cities in Canada could, and might very well, have socially progressive mayors in place, leaders who could actually engage in a respectful dialogue with senior levels of government (unlike you know who) to achieve much that would be beneficial to the concerns, and wants and needs of their respective electorate — leaving open the possibility, as well, that such socially progressive candidate wins could serve to redefine the concept of conservatism in Canada, consigning Stephen Harper’s mean-spirited concept of conservatism rightfully to the dustbin of history.
Kirk LaPointe and John Tory as latter day incarnations of Bill Davis.
There’s even a rumour extant that former premier, and Vancouver mayor, Mike Harcourt will endorse Kirk LaPointe late in this electoral campaign.
Rumour has it, too, that independent mayoral candidate Bob Kasting, and the startup Vancouver Cedar party, will also endorse Mr. LaPointe’s candidacy for mayor late in the current Vancouver municipal election cycle.

Most engaged voters know that the roots of the Progressive Conservative party emerged from the post WWI United Farmers movement, a radical grassroots, socialist amalgamation whose supporters founded the Progressive Party of Canada (what we refer to today as the — albeit, almost extinct — Red Tories within the Stephen Harper-led Conservative party), before amalgamating with the Conservative party proper in the early 1940s.
Progressive voters — traditional NDP voters — have a long history of voting strategically to support socially liberal, Progressive Conservative candidates whose grassroots ideals reflect those of the more left-leaning NDP.
In 2014, that would appear to be what we have in the Non-Partisan Association — a small “c” conservative municipal party that reflects the ideals of a broad cross-section of the voting electorate, a made-in-Vancouver civic political party comprised of honest, hard-working and humble servants of the public interest whose electoral platform consists of:

• Working with senior levels of government to develop affordable, and social housing, programmes to meet the broadest cross-section of the needs of the voting electorate in Vancouver, and their families;
• As Vancouver’s population ages, we have in Kirk LaPointe, a mayoralty candidate who is committed to investing in affordable housing and amenities for seniors citizens;
• A socially progressive Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate who grew up in rank poverty (a far cry from the silver-spoon-in-his-mouth mayoral incumbent), who has committed that with an NPA administration at Vancouver City Hall no child will go hungry, and more — that 365 days a year no child in our city will go hungry.

  What Kirk LaPointe hasn’t said is that he will work with senior levels of government to ensure that child poverty in Canada’s third largest city will become a grievous and deplorable feature of Vancouver’s past — make no mistake, Kirk LaPointe is committed to this latter goal, but has not made an announcement because he can’t promise he’ll deliver on it his first term in office. Unlike our incumbent mayor, the principled and socially conscious Kirk LaPointe, the mayoral candidate with the Non-Partisan Association, does not overpromise and under-deliver;

• Talking about overpromising and under-delivering, Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver have promised us free wi-fi across the city since before they were first elected. Kirk LaPointe has promised the same thing, beginning on Vancouver’s eastside, he says. The difference between the two promises? Kirk LaPointe will deliver on his promise, while you’ll be waiting til the cows come home before Gregor Robertson follows through on yet another empty Vision campaign promise;
• A municipal party in the NPA that will not increase property taxes in their first year in power, as the new civic administration conducts an audit of Vancouver’s likely to be woeful financial affairs;

• A party that does not practice the faux greenwashing of Vision Vancouver, but a municipal party that is committed to the health of its citizens, and is a vocal opponent of Vancouver’s waste to energy plans, as well as Metro Vancouver’s plan for a garbage incinerator and Vancouver’s current plan for a gasification plant at the city’s garbage transfer station. The NPA will instead concentrate on ways to increase reducing, reusing and recycling the City’s solid waste.
• A mayoral candidate in Kirk LaPointe who will end Vision Vancouver’s game-playing and get the long-awaited Southeast Vancouver Seniors Centre facility built; will create an open and transparent City Hall Lobbyist Registry, as well as the first ever Office of the Ombudsperson in Vancouver, an office that would seek to resolve citizens’ disputes with the City fairly and without necessitating resort to the courts, in the process returning trust and transparency to City Hall.

  Here’s a link to information on the Ombudsman Office, in Toronto;

Yes, there is something of the aspect of the merry-go-round in covering civic politics. It has oft been said, though, that a day in politics can seem like a lifetime, so changeable is the political dynamic from day-to-day.
While it is true that the party polling conducted early last week by Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association does not, as yet, reflect the growing groundswell of support for Kirk LaPointe’s “Anybody But Gregor” candidacy, perhaps that’s more a function of polling that was done outside of the golden horseshoe. VanRamblings has consulted widely in Grandview Woodland, Mount Pleasant, Fairview and Kitsilano, and we can tell you that for weeks now organizing drives have been afoot to dampen / hinder / annihilate the vote for Vision Vancouver; it’s just a matter of time before the polls reflect a much-increased support for the candidacy of Kirk LaPointe, whose electoral coattails could very well permanently dislodge a damnable Vision Vancouver administration from City Hall and Park Board.

In August, VanRamblings published a column, the headline of which read
“Mayor Gregor Robertson Virtually Unbeatable.” At the time, we had no firm idea that our concerns respecting Vision Vancouver’s governance of our city was so widely shared. Seems that the mayoral dynamic has changed a month and half later. VanRamblings may have to issue a mea culpa yet.