VanRamblings was disappointed to hear yesterday, from informed sources, that Vancouver’s newest municipal political party, One City Vancouver, has made the decision to contest only seats for Vancouver City Council in 2014, and will not be offering candidates in the Board of Education or Park Board sphere heading into Vancouver civic election day, on November 15th.
Our sources report that the decision was made some time ago, and despite the imprecations of many associated with the nascent civic political party, the decision’s been made, and there just ain’t no changing it. Sad.
With former COPE School Board trustee Jane Bouey, former Vancouver PAC Chair Gwen Giesbrecht, and longtime education activist Marcy Toms ready to head up a One City Vancouver Board of Education slate — and given the support of Vision Vancouver Board of Education chair Patti Bacchus for the candidacies of these three aforementioned, well-respected community and education activists — it is a pity, indeed, that One City Vancouver will focus solely on gaining one or more seats on Vancouver City Council this autumn.
In respect of Park Board, as we wrote to OneCity co-founder David Chudnovsky yesterday, there is very little doubt in our mind that OneCity’sMia Edbrooke would make a damn fine Park Board Commissioner. Seems that the affable, informed and very bright Ms. Edbrooke will not present her name as a candidate for Park Board this autumn — a loss for all Vancouver citizens who possess a degree of caring for parks and recreation in our city.
NPA Running to the Left in Campaign 2014, Means to Win This Time
Speculation is running rampant as to the nature of the civic election campaign that Vancouver’s natural governing party, the Non-Partisan Association (now, the New Progressive Association) will run this autumn.
Will it be the unfocused NPA, Rob Ford apparatchik-led botch job that Vancouverites experienced in 2011, or has the NPA in 2014 finally learned their lesson, and set about to embark on, and adopt the strategy of, a winning, centrist, socially progressive, neighbourhood-focused and citizen-engaged campaign for office? In the coming months, VanRamblings will report out on NPA strategy. Suffice to say: the NPA means to win in 2014.
Readers have written to enquire as to why VanRamblings had not included Vancouver First in Sunday’s posting on municipal political parties vying for office this autumn? Hell, we were very much looking forward to a viable Jesse Johl (pictured above) campaign, but alas it is not to be — which is not to say that Jesse won’t run, but rather to say with all the recent shenanigans afoot surrounding allegations about “misappropriated” funds at the Riley Park-Hillcrest Community Centre Association (where Johl sits as President), and lawsuits launched by Park Board, and NPA Board of Directors (and former good friend) member Ken Charko, directed at the oleaginous (if amiable, and outspoken) Johl, any latent candidacy for Vancouver civic office by Mr. Johl would only be met with huzzahs of derision. Would’ve been an interesting, noisy candidacy, tho. C’est la vie.
Vision Vancouver is in no position to play the money card against the NPA in this fall’s civic election after condo developer Bob Rennie hosted a $25,000 a plate fundraising lunch for Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson in March, according to IntegrityBC’s Executive Director Dermod Travis, in a statement issued last week. The luncheon caused outrage across the city.
“Political parties that live in glass money houses shouldn’t throw stones. Neither of Vancouver’s two major civic parties is holier-than-thou when it comes to political fundraising and neither of them seemed pressed for cash in 2011. The Bob Rennie lunch will also likely set a Canadian record for the cost of admittance to a political fundraising event.”
Rennie’s luncheon for Vision Vancouver also included a private “roundtable” discussion granting special access to Mayor Gregor Robertson. “It’s a pretty safe bet that they weren’t discussing the Vancouver Canucks for two hours over canapés,” said Travis.
Coalition of Progressive Electors members Daniel Tseghay, Maria Wallstam, Nathan Crompton, Sean Antrim and Tristan Markle, writing in The Mainlander, recently asked the pertinent question, “When developers give Vision $25,000, what kind of government do they get in return?”
Corporations and the real-estate industry donate to Vision Vancouver because it pays off.
The ruling party strategically approves developments that make their donors rich. Most notably, Wall Financial was a founder of Vision Vancouver and donated $280,000 in 2011. Since Vision came to power in 2008, Wall has seen its profits increase from $18 million to $61 million. Rize Alliance (who donated $10,950 to Vision in 2011) had their 26 story tower approved at Broadway and Kingsway, right in the heart of working class Mount Pleasant, despite community opposition of 80%.
Westbank, which donated $11,705 to Vision and $31,000 to the BC Liberals in the last municipal and provincial elections, was given a rezoning in Chinatown right in the middle of a community planning process. The Aquilini Family, who donated at least $10,000 to Vision over the last two elections … got a $35 million tax exemption for their project next to GM Place. Concord Pacific, which donated $36,250 to Vision in 2011 … is allowed to use urban farms to evade property taxes.
Under Vision’s corporate governance, condos are targeted at the most affordable existing neighbourhoods: Marpole, Grandview Woodland, the DTES, Mt. Pleasant, and the West End. Corporations see affordable and social housing as a threat to the market and an unwelcome competitor in the scarce supply of housing. As a result, Vision has worked to liquidate the existing affordable housing stock.
In the 2011 election, Vision Vancouver raised $2.2 million, mostly in five figure donations from corporations/developers and unions. The NPA raised $2.5 million. Last time out, campaign spending in Vancouver hit $5.3 million, in a city with 419,000 eligible voters. In 2008, it was $4.5 million.
Meanwhile, under Mayor Gregor Robertson’s leadership, the city has seen rents soar and its street homelessness population more than double this year, a 249 per cent increase since the last regional count in 2011. In 2014, there were 1,798 people without homes in Vancouver, and more people sleeping outdoors than in any other MetroVancouver municipality.
In March, candidates in Calgary’s 2013 election filed their campaign disclosure reports. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi — who ran his campaign on a self-imposed limit of 65 cents per eligible voter — spent $391,124. In April of this year, a Vision Vancouver-led majority City Council defeated a motion by Green Party of Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr urging voluntary campaign finance restrictions for the November 2014 election.
“I think we have, in the public, a feeling of distrust of politicians,” said Carr. “I hear us not trusting ourselves, not trusting each other in terms of holding to a voluntary pact together. I know that (my motion) would be voluntary, it would not be enforceable. It would however be ultimately trackable. I think perception here is critical, and it is related to the confidence in democracy, and the democracy in our decisions, and that we should as a Council extend the hope that speakers have asked us to uphold, the hope that we can work together in terms of setting some voluntary limits, and adhere to them.”
Meanwhile, in Calgary, with 668,000 eligible voters, Mayor Naheed Nenshi underspent his own cap by six cents per voter and ended the campaign with a surplus of $120,000, most of which he donated to local charities.
Three provinces — Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba — have existing campaign finance rules for local elections that could easily be adopted in Vancouver, argues IntegrityBC, which goes on to state that since Vancouver is the only major Canadian city that doesn’t have a ward system, Vancouver should adopt Ontario election spending rules as a basis for discussion among the parties and candidates, where campaign expenditures for Mayor, Council and School Board trustee candidates top out at 85¢ per elector.
“This isn’t a big leap for Vancouver’s municipal parties,” says IntegrityBC’s Travis. “The four parties that have sat on Council in the past eight years have all supported motions calling for electoral finance reform. This is a chance to show some leadership and put into practice what they’ve already agreed to. The will is there and there’s sufficient time before this fall’s elections to find the way.”
From CityHallWatch: Donation declarations are done on an “honour system.” No independent audit is conducted. Of particular concern, CityHallWatch suggests, is the non-reporting of “in-kind” donations (think: the undeclared 2011 CUPE BC Vision Vancouver election “donation” of $1.5 million, which months later magically transformed into a precedent-setting 6.85 per cent wage increase over three years for Vancouver civic workers, setting the stage for municipal employee contracts across the province).
And where does this leave the average Vancouver citizen, minimum and low wage workers, our homeless population, senior citizens living on a fixed income, and all the rest of us? At best, of secondary concern to a cynical, Vision Vancouver-led City Council, who are more focused on paying off their friends and supporters than in representing the needs and aspirations of the diverse, majority population who reside in the city of Vancouver.
Five months from today, on November 15th, 2014, Vancouver voters will head to the polls to elect a civic government to a four-year term in office at Vancouver City Hall. No municipal election in recent Vancouver civic electoral history will prove as critical to the vision for, and livability of, our city going forward than the current civic election campaign that is already underway.
At present, there are eight declared municipal parties in Vancouver that have announced for office, ranging from …
Vision Vancouver, the relatively new, only 9-year old municipal political party, a breakaway party from the leftist Coalition of Progressive Electors, which had held civic power from 2002 through 2005. Vision Vancouver first elected candidates to office in 2005, and since the 2008 Vancouver municipal election have held majority power at City Hall, where Mayor Gregor Robertson, his Vision Vancouver councillors, and political eminence gris/political fixer/Chief of Staff to the Mayor, Mike Magee, have embarked on a revolutionary development plan for the city that knows no precedent in our city’s 128-year history;
Non-Partisan Association (NPA), Vancouver’s oldest civic political party, first formed in 1937, a fiscally conservative party that many feel to be the city’s natural governing party, out of office since 2008, and (we would suggest) completely renewed and re-constituted, the only civic party than has a chance in hell of unseating the Vision Vancouver civic administration, a party that now fashions itself (and rightly so, we believe) as the New Progressive Association. In the next short while, the NPA will announce their Mayoral candidate, although general consensus is that it will be former broadcaster, journalist and current publisher-editor of Self Counsel Press, Kirk LaPointe;
Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE), Vancouver’s second oldest political party, long the conscience of our city, a party that over the years has found broad support across the 23 neighbourhoods that constitute the Vancouver we love, a party that some feel has fallen on hard times, with a retinue of former COPE members having recently broken away to form One City Vancouver, a left-progressive party, largely dominated by provincial NDP party stalwarts, and former Green Party leader Stuart Parker and recently resigned COPE Executive member taking regular potshots at COPE. Still, if we know COPE Executive Director Sean Antrim, and Tim Louis and Tristan Markle, who count themselves among a most committed group of social activists working to change Vancouver to transform our city into a much fairer, and more just, city (and we do), there’s simply no counting COPE out in 2014 — there’s just too much on the line this time around;
Green Party of Vancouver. Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr, who just squeaked into office in 2011, has done our city proud. Consistently the conscience of Vancouver City Council, the signal voice at Council and in the civic sphere representing and speaking for the interests of all Vancouver citizens, the Greens look to do well come November 15th, and based on Ms. Carr’s fine work in office this past almost three years, she will in all likelihood have coattails that will see relative political newcomers, and her Green Party of Vancouver running mates Pete Fry and Cleta Brown ascend to elected office, and a seat at the Council table, following the 2014 Vancouver civic election.
As to the remaining four Vancouver civic parties, although each of the parties is constituted of publically-minded citizens of good conscience, no one of them will come close to electing candidates to Vancouver City Council. That said, we are supportive of the aims of some of these political entities, and will in time write at length about each one of them. We realize in this first post, that our writing will be viewed by many as enigmatic — let us assure you, you will be left with no doubt in the coming months as to what VanRamblings believes are the issues of most importance to all of us as we head to the polls on November 15th, and who civic-minded citizens must consider as worthy candidates for elected office in Vancouver.
In closing, we’ll write a bit on the four remaining Vancouver civic parties …
One City Vancouver. Migawd, do we like these folks. Even though they ain’t gonna elect anyone to Council, One City is a definite threat to elect several candidates to Vancouver’s Board of Education, and we would suggest, as well, to Vancouver Park Board. At a future date, we’ll dedicate an entire column to One City Vancouver, and write at length (and supportively) about their candidates, once they announce;
Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver (NSV). Another group of civic-minded folks for whom VanRamblings has a great deal of time. Even though CityHallWatch is not, necessarily, the party’s journalistic arm, there are a great many NSV folks who contribute to one of Vancouver’s most critically important websites for democratic engagement. We will write about NSV, at length, at a future date;
The Electors’ Action Movement (TEAM). Good-hearted, civic-minded folks to be sure, but sad to say, apart from nostalgic name recognition, hardly a currently effective political force in Vancouver;
Vancouver Cedar Party. Largely a vehicle for the political ambitions of west side resident and financial analyst, Glen Chernen, you’ll likely hear a great deal from the Cedar Party in the coming months, signifying, we would suggest, much ado about not very much, a party of smoke and mirrors and anger, without much to say of consequence on the policy front. Still, between now and November, we will give Mr. Chernen, and his running mates, a forum on VanRamblings, as we will to all of the Vancouver municipal parties seeking elected office in 2014.
Well, that’s it for our first post on the upcoming Vancouver civic election.
In the coming days, VanRamblings will break news stories, and plan on providing every good reason to you to check in with us on a regular basis. Although it may take us a little while to ramp up (we’re a tad rusty, not having written in months), we promise you thorough — and, at times, pointed — coverage of Vancouver’s civic scene, in the coming months.
More tomorrow, thru til the November 15th civic election, and beyond.
One year from today, Vancouver will hold its triennial municipal election, Vancouver’s 101st election since the City was incorporated in 1886.
In Vancouver — where, unlike any other municipality in British Columbia, our election is held under the auspices of the Vancouver Charter — the citizens of our fair city will elect 10 City Councillors, 7 Park Board Commissioners, and 9 Board of Education Trustees who, from the weeks after the election, will conduct the governance of civic affairs in Canada’s third largest city.
And what an election it will be. Unless VanRamblings is off the mark — and we don’t believe we are — the 2014 civic election will prove to be the most disputatious election of a generation, as the nine parties seeking office attempt to slam their opponents with the knockout blow that will leave the challenger victorious, holding the reigns of government, or at the very least, the crucial swing votes that will determine Vancouver’s future.
Moreso than in any previous election, the nine parties that will compete for your vote, and elected office, will personalize their attacks on the members of the competing parties, identifying their opponents as “the other” …
The ‘Other’, VanRamblings would posit, is a member of another political party, who is designated by the ‘In’ group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way. Any political opponent becomes the ‘Other’. The municipal political party identifying “the Other(s)” sees itself as the norm and judges those who do not meet that norm as “the Other”. Perceived as lacking essential characteristics possessed by the ‘In’ group, the ‘Other’ is almost always seen as a lesser or inferior being and is treated accordingly in all pronouncements, and in the conduct of personal and political affairs in the common weal. The ‘Other’ will often be characterized as lacking, as less intelligent, or as unstable - which is to say, of reduced or challenged mental capacity - as amoral or immoral, and may even be regarded as tantamount to being sub-human.
And thus the tone will be set for the 2014 Vancouver municipal election.
Perhaps VanRamblings could expand on our definition of the ‘Other’, as we understand it as philosophical concept, and offer brief remedial prescription.
1. The concept of the ‘Other’ comes from the perspective that makes ‘difference’ the key focus in analyzing how we understand the world around us - thus the spelling is often capitalized.
2. The ‘Other’ is nearly always used as a negative term.
3. The myth of the ‘Other’ in literature, conceived of as ‘perilous’ and ‘strange’ or ‘abnormal’ plays with the concept of the monstrous ‘Other’. The concept of the monster helps to prevent those who identify with the main characters — or, in this instance, the proponents on the main political parties — from assuming that they know everything about them, that they are good; that there is, as Nietzsche has written, “dark chaos that sits in man’s hearts”, as it does in the hearts of the ‘Other’.
4. When the ‘In’ group designates the ‘Other’, they point out the perceived weaknesses of the ‘Other’, to make themselves look stronger, better, more able and more capable. Such designation implies a hierarchy, and it often serves to keep power where it already lies.
5. The ‘In’ group seeks to demonize, marginalize and punish the ‘Other’, often through heinous discriminatory measures, to eliminate the ‘Other’.
VanRamblings would argue we must strive in contemporary society for empathy and understanding, and the melding and blending of groups, in order that the ‘Other’ will no longer be a phenomena of our current era.
Each party running for office in 2014 will most assuredly identify their opponents as “the other”. It is a “if yer not fer us, yr agin us” philosophy of politics, reliant on a dehumanization of individual members of the opposing party, or parties, the political opponent as demon, who means to do ill — and in the case of Vision Vancouver, it will be claimed, has done ill — and should this unacceptable circumstance, and the aberrant individual(s) who currently hold office retain that office, competing party stalwarts will argue the apocalypse will most certainly be upon each and every one of us.
For many, with nine competing parties vying fiftfully for the attention of a disengaged electorate — let us not forget that in 2011 there was only a 34% turnout of eligible voters at the polls, and that only because of the $658,000 Vision Vancouver ad buy in the final five days of the campaign, a “happy face” strategy that brought out 10,000 “new” voters, in an election which resulted in a 4% greater turnout than in 2008, the election which brought Vision Vancouver to power — the 2014 Vancouver civic election will beggar belief in the malevolent tone of candidate political discourse.
Make no mistake, it will be Vision Vancouver and the NPA who, while attempting to knock each other off message, will bear the brunt of vituperative attack, as the only two parties with any conceivable chance of forming government, the “two developer parties” you will be told repeatedly, as if that is necessarily a bad thing — neither of which party, voters will be instructed, deserving of your vote, the panjundrum repeated ad nauseum, until a disgusted electorate tunes out the cacophony of ill will — none of which circumstance serves the public good or the common weal.
The question begs: does it have to be that way, must Vancouver politicians get down into the muck in order to prevail on election day?
Stepan Vdovine, Vision Vancouver’s Executive Director, would argue not.
In a Letter to the Editor published in this week’s Georgia Straight, Stepan writes about the paranoia about Vision Vancouver’s “secret agenda” …
The type of negative attacks we’re seeing from failed council candidates, or the Tea Party-like anger of the NPA, is not surprising as we approach the one-year mark to the next election. Mayor Gregor Robertson and the Vision Vancouver-led council have overseen a boom in new rental housing, more social housing being built in Vancouver than ever before, a drop in people sleeping on the streets, and strong action on climate change.
Let’s hope the various opposition parties start offering their own policy solutions, rather than more anger and negative attacks on Vision.
Further down the page, VanRamblings weighs in …
Stepan is, of course, right: decorum, decency and civility in covering - and in - public life would be a net good thing. Since the election of Sam Sullivan in 2005, politics has devolved to a disheartening degree, not helped by Mayor Gregor, in his first term, when he referred to folks like urban geographer Ned Jacobs as a “fucking NPA” hack. Not a lot of civility there.
Stepan is a good guy (c’mon now, he really is).
But the bare fact is that there are a great many Vancouver citizens who have become infuriated with Vision Vancouver, however ably and well Stepan has come to the defense of the party that employs him as its Executive Director.
My fear is that in the coming 12 months, those of us who live in Vancouver will experience the ugliest municipal political campaign of a generation, a campaign where both Vision Vancouver and the NPA (neither of which party is “the devil”) will be demonized by their opponents - be they from COPE, NSV, TEAM 2.0, Vancouver First, or the Cedar Party - and that, contrary to what Stepan would wish, we will hear precious little about, “policy solutions, rather than more anger and negative attacks on …” well, on Vision Vancouver and the NPA.
We live in perilous times. People are frustrated and angry, and don’t feel as if they’re being listened to; the natural consequence of that is, as Stepan writes, “Tea Party-like anger” … but directed not just at Vision Vancouver, but at any politico who just doesn’t get it.
Vision Vancouver, who’ve become one of the most tone-deaf civic administrations of a generation, will bear the brunt of that anger, in 2014.
This next year? It ain’t gonna be pretty.
Again, the question begs: does it have to be that way?
In a Toronto Star story published earlier in the week, former Ontario Tory leader Bill Davis argued, as VanRamblings does above, that we need more decorum, decency and civility in public life. In the 1970s, Davis built up a formidable campaign team — dubbed the Big Blue Machine — which resulted in a Progressive Conservative government in Ontario that prevailed from 1971 through 1985, with Davis as Premier. How did Davis achieve such a lengthy stay in government? As Martin Regg Cohn’s story suggests …
He governed from the progressive flank of the Progressive Conservative party, positioning it in the middle of Ontario politics and securing its place as the province’s natural governing dynasty. And by surrounding himself with savvy, compassionate political aides — cerebral Tories with heart — who helped him keep his ear to the ground while perched in the premier’s office from 1971-85.
The consequence? Good government. Progressive government. Government that listened to the people, and acted on their concerns. These days that almost seems like a foreign concept, doesn’t it?
In the coming days, weeks and months, VanRamblings will have a great deal to say about each of the political parties that will enter the municipal political electoral fray, next year, in the fight for your vote. As may be determined by our commentary above, we will not support Vision Vancouver’s re-election — outside of support for a handful of their Board of Education candidates — and will seek to move our support to the only Vancouver civic party that we believe has any chance whatsoever in dislodging Vision Vancouver — the most arrogant, untoward municipal government since the days of Tom “Terrific” Campbell, in the late 1960s / early 1970s.
In the past month and more, while working with members of the Kitsilano community, in the west side neighbourhood where VanRamblings has resided for more than thirty years, the Save Kits Beach movement has emerged as the civic story of legacy, for our children and their children. That the Non-Partisan Association, the NPA, emerged as the only municipal political party that acknowledged the importance of legacy is, for us, a profound sadness, in the political venture in which we are all going to be involved in the next year, as we head towards the polls on Nov. 15, 2014.
The NPA: a “right wing” party? Maybe in the past, but no more. No, in 2014, the NPA has learned its lesson, recovered from the nastiness that defined the Sam Sullivan administration (not that everything Sam, and his Council, did was “bad” — let’s leave aside “Sam’s strike” for the moment) — and has once again emerged as a humanist party, a party of parents and children, grandkids and uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers and neighbours, the only municipal political party in Vancouver — apart from Art Phillips’ TEAM (The Electors’ Action Movement) of the 1970s — that has ever come close to truly representing the middle class, which is where most of us find ourselves. Although COPE continues to fight the good fight for the poor, destitute and vulnerable, fights for truly affordable housing (not that they have the first clue what that means, in practice), and fights for better transit, while Vision Vancouver fights for raw, cynical power, and tell themselves lies each and every day to get through the day, it is the NPA, VanRamblings believes, which best represents the aspirations of the majority of Vancouverites, about which we will provide explanation and expansion in future VanRamblings posts, in the months to come.
Over the course of the coming 12 months, VanRamblings will keep an open mind. We know that TEAM 2.0’s Bill McCreery, Mike Andruff and Dave Pasin are decent men, men of character and intelligence. And despite all, we believe as much as we have always believed that COPE’s Stuart Parker — one of the brightest, most charismatic politicians of a generation — deserves a place on Vancouver City Council, as we pretty much believe of COPE stalwart Tim Louis, although we are probably among a minority of those who will support him at the polls in 2014, and perhaps more’s the pity on that count, because we need a firebrand on Vancouver City Council. Although it is not de rigeur to say so, we like Vancouver First candidate (and he will be) Jesse Johl. And, if Stuart Mackinnon runs for Vancouver City Council, as a Green candidate, he will most decidedly find our favour.
Make no mistake, though, it is the Non-Partisan Association, and the Non-Partisan Association alone that can unseat Vision Vancouver, and remove them from City Hall and Park Board: given that the NPA is the best-funded and most united municipal party entering next year’s Vancouver municipal election. And you know what else? The NPA is one of the only municipal political parties comprised of sincere folks of character with — wait for this — actual beating hearts — which is to say, there are great women and men in the NPA who are principled, centrist, have your best interests at heart, and should they run afoul of what it is that you want for your community — after assuming office in 2014 — you will be surprised and pleased to discover that the NPA will prove to be, as has always proved to be the case (save the interregnum of the Sam Sullivan administration, and portions of various eras prior to 1972), the one Vancouver municipal political party that — after six years of unbelievably arrogant government under Vision Vancouver — will actually listen to you, and what is even more important, act on your concerns for your benefit.
What if they don’t? (and they will, because as was the case with Bill Davis, the NPA wishes to be the once and forever Vancouver civic party of government), Vancouver voters can depend on our “liberal media” to hold the NPA’s feet to the fire, in a manner that has been woefully, disconcertingly, and unacceptably absent this past five years — with the notable exception of Charlie Smith, Carlito Pablo, and the dedicated Georgia Straight journalists who do their very best to keep us informed — which “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable” journalistic philosophy will thankfully, and gratefully, once again come to the fore to serve us all.
