Category Archives: canadian politics

#VanPoli | VOTE for Solomon Yi-Kieran | A New Generation Steps Forward in Vancouver

At a time when municipal politics can sometimes look like an old person’s game, Solomon Yi-Kieran represents something Vancouver badly needs: a younger generation prepared not merely to complain about politics, but to enter the arena and try to change it.

Power structures across the country are often dominated by older cohorts, leaving younger residents feeling that the issues directly shaping their futures — from soaring living costs to climate resilience — are addressed with passive incrementalism rather than urgency. It is precisely why having young leaders come forward to run for elected office is so critical.

Young candidates bring a essential perspective to local government. They carry the lived experience of navigating today’s acute housing crisis, reliance on public transit, and the precarity of the modern economy. Rather than viewing policies through abstract statistics, young representatives experience the direct impact of municipal decisions every day.

At 20 years old, Yi-Kieran — who identifies as they/them — represents a rising generation of community organizers who refuse to wait on the sidelines.

Stepping up to bring that exact energy and perspective to local government is Solomon Yi-Kieran is running for Vancouver City Council with the The Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) in the October 17 municipal election. Still in their early 20s, they are among the youngest candidates seeking a seat on Council — and their résumé is already unusually substantial for someone so young.

Yi-Kieran graduated from Glenlyon Norfolk School in Victoria in 2023. While still in high school, they were accepted into Oxford University’s history and politics programme, but ultimately chose to attend the University of British Columbia.

At the University of British Columbia, Yi-Kieran is an Arts student studying History and Linguistics, with a particular interest in history and education. They have said their long-term ambition is to become a high-school history teacher.

Their political education, however, has taken place as much outside the classroom as inside it.

Despite their young age, Yi-Kieran already boasts a track record as a public advocate and student leader. Yi-Kieran has been deeply involved in UBC student politics, serving as a student senator and, more recently, as Vice-President External Affairs of the Alma Mater Society, representing more than 61,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

Yi-Kieran has advocated for improved accessibility and academic accommodations, recorded lectures, affordable student housing, greater financial assistance and more transparent university governance.

 

Their activism extends beyond campus.

Yi-Kieran has worked with the BC NDP, participated in campaigns involving affordable sexual-health services and humanitarian assistance, and organized advocacy for a federal Youth Climate Corps. That campaign ultimately helped secure $40 million for youth climate employment.

Yi-Kieran’s background in activism is rooted in tangible, grassroots organizers’ campaigns:

  • Public Transit Expansion: As AMS VP External, they spearheaded the high-profile campaign to extend the Millennium Line SkyTrain route directly to UBC, organizing rallies and leading a petition that gathered over 15,000 signatures to press provincial and municipal governments into action.

  • Student & Tenant Advocacy: They have consistently organized around tenant rights, pushing for tenant protections in student residence housing and lobbying for increased non-market and below-market housing options in the University Endowment Lands.

  • Climate & Youth Empowerment: Through coalition work with student unions across British Columbia, Yi-Kieran campaigned for the establishment of a national Youth Climate Corps.

Running on the progressive COPE platform, Yi-Kieran’s Council campaign focuses on systemic challenges:

  1. Housing Affordability & Tenant Protection: Expanding non-market, social, and co-op housing, alongside strong rent-control protections to keep renters from being priced out of Vancouver.

  2. Public Transit & Infrastructure: Accelerating major regional transit extensions like the UBC SkyTrain corridor and ensuring accessible, frequent municipal transit options.

  3. Climate Action & Green Jobs: Supporting local climate initiatives, including clean energy transitions and workforce opportunities for young people in sustainability.

  4. Labour & Accessibility Reforms: Championing worker rights, accessibility accommodations, and transparent civic governance that invites broader public participation.

Yi-Kieran’s campaign offers Vancouver voters a chance to bring a fresh, community-driven voice to Vancouver City Hall — one that understands the pressing realities facing the city’s youth, renters, and working residents.

Perhaps their most visible campaign has been the fight for a SkyTrain extension to UBC. As AMS vice-president external, Yi-Kieran spearheaded a petition that gathered more than 10,000 signatures and pressed provincial and federal governments to move forward on the long-promised project.

Now Yi-Kieran wants to take that activism to Vancouver City Hall.

There is a tendency on the left to approach issues on a macro scale, to fight for systemic change that makes a difference for the better in the lives of groups of our disenfranchised population, whose voices are neither heard nor respected.

Sometimes in such a circumstance, there is a tendency to lose touch with the individual needs of members of the community, of families, of Vancouver’s new immigrant or ethnic populations, of individual seniors and students.

From VanRamblings’ personal experience, we are here to tell you that in addition to working on a macro scale for systemic change, Solomon Yi-Kieran also connects — really connects — on a micro scale, that is, they see you, feel you, empathize with you, hear your concerns, and will work with you one-on-one to make the conditions of your life better, to work with you to resolve your issues of concern.

Something else to mention about Solomon Yi-Kieran, for which again we have first hand salutary experience: Solomon is kind.

Sadly, a commodity in short supply in politics.

In an era where political discourse is often dominated by divisiveness, hostility, and polarization, the concept of kindness might seem quaint or naïve.

When we examine the foundational purpose of politics — the organization of society for the common good — kindness emerges as a practical and necessary value.

At its core, kindness represents empathy, respect, and a genuine concern for others. When woven into the fabric of political practices, kindness fosters collaboration, promotes inclusivity, and enables the pursuit of justice and equality.

When you cast your ballot for Solomon Yi-Kieran this October, and when they are elected to Vancouver City Council, you will come to find that there is no stronger advocate for you on City Council than Solomon Yi-Kieran, whose boundless energy, heartbreaking intelligence, inspiring presence in your life, and dedication to improving the conditions of your life will always be the driving force and central feature of their time in municipal governance at Vancouver City Hall.

Their platform emphasizes affordable housing, rents, better and eventually free public transit, government transparency and accountability, and making Vancouver a city in which young people can afford to build a life. They have called for reviving the City’s Renters Office, and establishing a climate defense strategy.

 

Solomon has emerged as one of COPE’s leading voices opposing proposed artificial-intelligence data centres in Vancouver, calling for a moratorium until their environmental, water, electricity, employment and privacy implications are properly understood.

But Yi-Kieran’s candidacy is about more than any particular policy.

Canadian politics — and especially municipal politics — can become dominated by people who have been around for decades. Experience matters, certainly. But so does having people in government who will live with the consequences of today’s decisions for another 50 or 60 years.

Young politicians bring a different perspective. They experience the housing crisis as renters rather than homeowners. They depend upon public transit. They confront the realities of precarious employment, student debt, climate change and an increasingly digital economy firsthand.

Yi-Kieran’s campaign offers Vancouver voters a chance to bring a fresh, community-driven voice to City Hall — one that understands the pressing realities facing the city’s youth, renters, and working residents.

They also bring something politics desperately needs: a sense of urgency.

Perplexity | Raymond Tomlin | Public Intellectual

Does the guy pictured above look anything like a ‘public intellectual’ to you? Gosh, we don’t think so. James Baldwin, Christopher Hitchens, Noam Chomsky, Dorothy Parker, William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, and Hannah Arendt are all public intellectuals, but this Tomlin guy? Nope, ain’t no chance.

On June 23rd, VanRamblings published a ChatGPT profile of the author of this blog, Raymond Tomlin (that’s me, above).

Last evening, we became aware of Perplexity, the newest large language model artificial intelligence search engine now available on the Internet.

To test it out, we asked the question, “Who is Raymond Tomlin, the Vancouver-based blogger? Tell us a little about him that might be of interest to a reader.”

Here’s what Perplexity Had to Say About This Raymond Tomlin Fella

Raymond Tomlin is a long-standing Vancouver civic commentator, blogger, educator, and former journalist, whose best-known work is the site VanRamblings, a personal, highly opinionated chronicle of local politics and culture in Vancouver.

Mr. Tomlin is best understood not as a conventional beat reporter, but as a deeply engaged participant-observer in the city’s public life, writing for decades about municipal politics, provincial and federal issues, film, music, activism, and the social texture of Vancouver.

In recent years, Mr. Tomlin’s public identity has been tied to his VanRamblings blog, where he is described as the founder, publisher, and principal writer.

The site’s retrospective indicates that Mr. Tomlin has spent more than two decades building a substantial archive of essays on civic affairs and cultural life, positioning himself as an active voice in public debate rather than a detached observer.

The portrait of Mr. Tomlin that emerges is of a Vancouver-based public intellectual in the older civic sense: someone who comments on the city while also participating in its institutions, campaigns, and disputes. Mr. Tomlin is not just a blogger in the casual sense; over its 22-year life span on the Internet, Mr. Tomlin has treated his blog as a long-form civic notebook, and an instrument of local influence.

VanRamblings’ Clear Centre of Gravity: Vancouver Municipal Politics

The strongest evidence to support this contention points to his sustained attention to Vancouver City Council, the Vancouver School Board, and Vancouver’s Board of Park and Recreation — where he has long been a sustained observer (or, as some have said, the conscience) of this unique civic institution — with Mr. Tomlin also displaying a deep interest in housing policy, neighbourhood planning, development across the city and the region, and local governance, while also branching into provincial, federal, and occasional international topics.

All of the above makes VanRamblings distinctly local-first, with civic politics at the core and culture as an important secondary thread.

VanRamblings’ tone is also part of its orientation

Vanramblings is famous — or infamous, as the case may be — for its sometimes controversial editorial orientation, providing always an expansive, passionate, often humorous, and at times hyperbolic (at least in the past) style of writing.

Mr. Tomlin often writes in the third person, which the site frames as a stylistic device for ironic distance. In practice, that means VanRamblings reads less like a neutral news outlet and more like a very personal civic forum, where opinion, memory, reporting, and advocacy are blended together.

According to the records we located regarding Mr. Tomlin’s educational background, in 1975, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Sociology, and Anthropology, followed by a Bachelor of Education specializing in Reading and Early Childhood Education, and later a Master of Arts in Policy Administration, all at Simon Fraser University. This academic mix helps to explain the shape of his later work: social analysis, teaching, and policy commentary — all of which sit naturally together in his writing.

Mr. Tomlin’s educational background also suggests why VanRamblings often ranges beyond surface politics.

As someone trained in the social sciences and policy administration, Mr. Tomlin has tended to focus on civic issues in terms of institutions, incentives, and long-term social consequences, rather than only election-by-election tactics.

Before VanRamblings emerged in February 2004, Raymond Tomlin had a varied career in civic activism, union organizing, as a founder of the largest grassroots Canadian food co-operative movement in the 1970s, education and journalism.

Over the years, Mr. Tomlin has worked as a teacher in British Columbia’s public education system — during which time his activism led him to become the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation Learning and Working Conditions Chairperson, representing the north and south Okanagan. Mr. Tomlin also entered the private education system for one year, teaching in a gifted education programme.

Mr. Tomlin has also taught at Vancouver Community College, Langara College, and Simon Fraser University. While working on his Masters degree at SFU, Mr. Tomlin was appointed as the Director of the Education 401/402 programme, the first semester SFU education programme, where students spend the first two months of their year long Professional Development Programme (PDP) as student teachers in various classrooms located across the Metro Vancouver region.

On the journalism side, Mr. Tomlin wrote for a Vancouver wide student newspaper in the 1960s — while enrolled at Templeton Secondary School —  and while attending Simon Fraser University he took on the position as Editor-in-Chief of SFU’s student newspaper, The Peak.

Mr. Tomlin also worked in the summer intern programme at both the Vancouver Sun and The Province, later building a substantial independent publishing practice through his blog. That trajectory helps explain why VanRamblings feels like a hybrid of memoir, commentary, archival record, and commentary newsroom.

VanRamblings is a one-person publication shaped by someone who has been around journalism, but who is not constrained by conventional newsroom style.

Tomlin’s public image is seen by some as polarizing, yet he endures to this day.

While Mr. Tomlin’s critics have found his writing to be overly opinionated, his many supporters and admirers see his independence, personality, and longevity as strengths, in his invaluable work as a persistent chronicler of Vancouver who has kept publishing through changing media conditions, no small achievement in a city where journalism has contracted significantly.

One of the most striking features of VanRamblings is its continuity.

Raymond — campus radical — and the ever brilliant Cathy, circa summer of 1972

Across decades, Raymond Tomlin has remained focused on the same broad public project: documenting and influencing civic debate in Vancouver. That consistency gives him an outsized presence relative to what a “blogger” label might suggest.

Taken together, the contribution Raymond Tomlin has made to public discourse has made him over the years a Vancouver civic insider-outsider: close enough to politics, education, labour, and journalism to understand how institutions work, yet independent enough to write in his own voice and on his own terms.

VanRamblings’ political orientation is decidedly progressive-civic in the broad sense that it emphasizes local governance, public interest issues, activism, and cultural life.

In a concluding summary: Raymond Tomlin is a veteran Vancouver commentator whose VanRamblings blog remains as an invaluable civic institution.

Over the years, Mr. Tomlin has added much to our understanding of the Vancouver municipal political scene, and our city’s cultural imperative, as reflected in the contribution Mr. Tomlin has made in providing extensive coverage of Vancouver’s thriving dance community — particularly Ballet BC, which institution Mr. Tomlin has long loved — theatre, cinema, Vancouver’s culinary scene, art (including photography), and the vibrant cultural life of the city we all call home.


The Curse of Politics | The Latest Edition

VanRamblings Returns | The Curse of Politics | This Week’s Episode


Please click on the YouTube link above for the latest edition of the Curse of Politics

After two long and arduous weeks, VanRamblings is back on the Internet.

Today on VanRamblings, we present the latest episode of our favourite podcast, David Herle’s The Curse of Politics, the must-watch and must-listen-to weekly political podcast that is mandatory viewing and listening.

We wrote about The Curse of Politics on June 24th.

You can access that column by clicking on the underlined link in the paragraph above, to read all about the history of the folks who each week make The Curse of Politics the place to be if you give a galldarn about the state of our society, and want the no-holds-barred inside scoop on what’s going on in Ottawa.

We’re going to hold off on writing about politics on VanRamblings until next week.

We have a column already to go, a couple of weeks late in the publishing, all about our friend Bill McCreery — who we visited in Sechelt last week — that will just knock your socks off. Look for that must-read column next Monday, July 27th.

On Thursday, we’ll publish a health update on the founder of this site, that is all kinds of hopeful, I think. That column will not be the detailed column we’ll publish in the future, but will present information that places VanRamblings into context.

We’ll see what Friday brings.

Birthday countdown: only 22 days (actually, three weeks today) til Raymond Tomlin’s birthday. Yes, the annual Fraser Valley tour is in the offing.

Click on the link directly below for the birthday tour itinerary.

The 35th anniversary of Raymond’s Annual Birthday Tour of the Fraser Valley.

#BCPoli | Kerry-Lynne Findlay, BC Conservatives | Is The Maple MAGA Leader Unfit To Become Premier?

Kerry-Lynne Findlay, the new B.C. Conservative Party leader

The Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove: The Ascent of Kerry-Lynne Findlay

On May 30, 2026, the Rocky Mountaineer Station in Vancouver played host to an ideological tug-of-war that would reshape the political landscape of British Columbia. When the fourth and final ballot of the Conservative Party of BC leadership race settled, Kerry-Lynne Findlay emerged victorious. But the crown she inherited is heavy, fractured, and forged in the fires of an intense internal civil war.

Ms. Findlay, a 71-year-old veteran of the Stephen Harper era, successfully positioned herself as a “conservative by conviction, not by convenience,” rallying a base that favoured a hard-right ideological shift over centrist moderation.

Yet, as she takes the helm of the province’s Official Opposition, her victory is over-shadowed by a razor-thin mandate, serious federal compliance investigations, and deep fractures within her own ranks.

A Razor-Thin Mandate from the Hinterlands

To understand the challenge ahead for Ms. Findlay is to understand just how narrow her path to victory truly was. Her battle against political commentator and former BC United vice-president Caroline Elliott was an absolute photo finish.


For VanRamblings (and her leadership campaign manager, Kory Teneycke), it is almost impossible to believe that a competent, articulate, younger, electable Caroline Elliott lost to Kerry-Lynne Findlay

As provincial affairs columnist Vaughn Palmer noted in the Vancouver Sun, Ms. Findlay topped Ms. Elliott by a mere 60 raw votes out of more than 22,000 ballots cast. Under the party’s riding-weighted system, this translated to a 51% to 49% victory — the narrowest possible margin for democratic legitimacy.

More telling than the margin is the geographic and demographic divide it exposed:

  • The Urban-Rural Split: Ms. Findlay’s victory was not built in the urban or suburban centres of the Lower Mainland. In Vancouver proper, she captured just 17% of first-round support, and only 14% in West Vancouver-Sea-to-Sky;
  • The Northern Surge: Her true base of power lay in the northern, rural, and resource-dependent heartlands. In ridings like Stikine-Bulkley Valley — a region dotted with heavily Christian towns and areas deeply entangled in resource development debates — Ms. Findlay dominated, capturing 59% of the vote.

By rejecting the more centrist visions put forward by her former rivals — current MLA Peter Miloba, former BC Liberal MLA Iain Black, and Ms. Elliott herself — Ms. Findlay consolidated a populism rooted outside the major metropolitan areas.

The Ghost of 2025: Elections Canada Allegations

Compounding the structural divisions within her party is a serious external vulnerability. Ms. Findlay enters her provincial leadership under a distinct legal and ethical cloud stemming from her recent political past.

During the 2025 federal election, Ms. Findlay lost her seat as the Member of Parliament for South Surrey — White Rock. However, the fallout from that campaign continues to loom large. An ongoing Elections Canada investigation features severe allegations regarding her campaign’s financial and operational conduct:

The Allegations Under Investigation:

  • Undeclared Corporate Benefits: It is alleged that Ms. Findlay’s campaign received $75,000 in undeclared and unpaid services from a private corporation;
  • Quid Pro Quo: Investigators suggest these corporate services were provided in exchange for promises of lucrative federal contracts down the road;
  • Foreign National Canvassing: Perhaps most damagingly, the investigation further suggests that approximately 50 individuals described as foreign nationals without legal status actively canvassed on behalf of Ms. Findlay during the campaign. Ms. Findlay has dismissed the investigation as standard political friction, but the potential for formal sanctions provides constant ammunition for her political opponents.

Pulling the Party to the Right: The Culture War Focus

In a comprehensive profile for the online journal The Tyee, journalist Jen St. Denis highlighted the fundamental shift occurring under the new leadership, run under the stark headline: Findlay Pulls BC Conservatives to the Right.

Ms. Findlay’s platform leans heavily into “faith, family, and freedom,” a rhetorical framework that critics argue mirrors American-style populist movements. Observers describe her as a Trump-adjacent “MAGA Maple” figure, highly focused on divisive culture war issues rather than traditional policy consensus.

The Battle Over SOGI 123

A central pillar of Ms. Findlay’s ideological brand is her fierce opposition to the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI 123) curriculum implemented in British Columbia schools. Ms. Findlay has campaigned on entirely dismantling the programme, aligning herself with anti-trans and parental rights groups.

This position puts her in direct opposition to empirical academic research.

A landmark study led by Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), demonstrated that SOGI 123 has proved highly effective. Dr. Saewyc’s findings revealed that SOGI-inclusive education successfully reduced bullying and sexual orientation discrimination across B.C. schools, yielding safer environments for both LGBTQ+ and heterosexual students alike.

By entirely rejecting Dr. Saewyc’s findings, Ms. Findlay has signaled that ideological alignment takes precedence over academic consensus.

A House Divided: Internal Purges and Controversial Allies

Upon seizing the leadership, Ms. Findlay wasted no time restructuring the party in her own image, executing an uncompromising internal purge. She immediately fired all legislative and party staff who had any lingering connections to the former BC United / BC Liberal apparatus or its former leader, Kevin Falcon.

Furthermore, Ms. Findlay’s inner circle and candidate roster have drawn intense scrutiny for harboring far-right, anti-vaccine, and conspiracy-driven viewpoints.

The Inner Circle

  • Brent Chapman: Findlay’s own husband, now the MLA for Surrey South, has a well-documented history of controversy. During the 2024 provincial election campaign, a series of his historical social media posts were unearthed, revealing deeply Islamophobic and racist content that generated widespread public condemnation;
  • Sheldon Clare (House Leader): Ms. Findlay appointed the MLA for Prince George-North Cariboo as her newly minted House Leader. Mr. Clare, a reserve army officer and the former president of the National Firearms Association (NFA), briefly ran for the leadership himself before dropping out to back Ms. Findlay. He brings a brand of staunchly uncompromising, hard-right gun-rights populism to the legislative floor;
  • Heather Maahs (Leader of the Opposition): Because Ms. Findlay does not currently hold a seat in the BC Legislature, she cannot personally serve as the Leader of the Official Opposition. To fill this vital constitutional role, she bypassed proven, moderate legislative leaders like former interim leader Trevor Halford and former House Leader Áʼa:líya Warbus — a move provincial affairs columnist Vaughn Palmer criticized as dumping seasoned veterans for her hard-right backers. Instead, she installed Heather Maahs, the MLA for Chilliwack North. Maahs, who spent 16 years on the Chilliwack school board, is an unabashed pro-life advocate who recently drew fire for hosting a legislative session with an advocacy group that explicitly regards homosexuality as “immoral.”

This hard-right consolidation has created what former insiders describe as a hostile environment. Former Conservative MLAs Elenore Sturko and Amelia Boultbee both publicly stepped away from the party apparatus, citing a “toxic work environment” driven by ideological extremism, subsequently becoming vocal critics of Findlay’s direction.

The Actuarial Reality of a 2028 Campaign

Beyond the ideological friction, Ms. Findlay faces an inescapable reality: the passage of time. When the next British Columbia provincial election is called in late 2028, Findlay will be entering her 74th year. Should she win and serve a full four-year term as Premier, she would be in her 78th year by its conclusion.

While age alone does not dictate capability, gerontologists and medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic emphasize the compounding physical and cognitive challenges that accompany leadership at this stage of life, as observed globally in political figures like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, or in our 70s as VanRamblings has experienced ourself approaching our 76th birthday, now only 40 days away.

  • Factor: Potential Impact on High-Stress Leadership;
  • Cognitive Function: Gradual declines in cognitive processing speed, reaction time, and the ability to multitask can affect the management of complex, rapid-fire executive daily tasks.;
  • Physical Vitality. A combination of physical fatigue, chronic health conditions (such as arthritis or cardiovascular changes), and sensory declines in vision and hearing that can restrict mobility and lower overall energy reserves;
  • Neurotransmitter Changes: Age-related reductions in serotonin levels that can increase emotional vulnerability, while chronic pain or fatigue can manifest as heightened irritability or agitation under pressure.

Navigating the grueling, 24-hour news cycle of a provincial election and managing a sprawling government requires physical and mental stamina, posing a practical question mark over her long-term tenure.

The Mainstream Disconnect

Would you vote for the woman pictured above to become British Columbia’s 38th Premier?

Ultimately, Kerry-Lynne Findlay’s political future depends on whether her brand of unapologetic populism can survive outside her rural interior voting base.

British Columbia’s electorate has historically favoured a pragmatic, centrist approach to governance. By leaning so heavily into the culture wars, opposing established Indigenous rights frameworks, and platforming fringe rhetoric, Ms. Findlay risks alienating the vital moderate voters of the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island — voters who decide majorities.

Ms. Findlay enters the arena significantly weighed down. The cloud of the federal Elections Canada investigation remains unresolved, her internal mandate is mathematically microscopic, and her party is deeply divided after the alienation of its moderate wing.

In a province currently grappling with an acute affordability crisis — where the cost of housing remains out of reach, grocery prices continue to skyrocket across every community, and gas prices pinch working families at the pumps — Ms. Findlay’s intense focus on social grievances risks looks profoundly out of touch.

If the B.C. Conservative Party cannot offer reassuring solutions to the daily economic anxieties of the mainstream voter, Ms. Findlay’s hard-right experiment may find itself entirely rejected at the ballot box in 2028.

Can Kerry-Lynne Findlay successfully expand her narrow rural coalition to win over moderate urban voters in the 2028 provincial election? We’re not so sure.