Last evening at the University Women’s Club of Vancouver, at Hycroft Manor, in a townhall moderated by Lynne Kent, women candidates seeking office in the often bumptious 2018 Vancouver civic election were provided a forum to discuss the issues of importance to all Vancouver voters, and most particularly to women voters and their lived experience. Women vote in exponentially higher numbers than men, in general women’s innate social conscience determining the candidates for whom they will cast their ballot.
Today on VanRamblings: women who will save our city, and who will work with integrity & élan for and toward a fairer and more just city for all of us.

On Monday evening, Little Mountain Neighbourhood House held a Mayoral Forum, at Vancouver’s Heritage Hall, located at 15th and Main.
Seven of the twenty-one Mayoral candidates seeking to fill the Mayor’s chair were invited to the forum, but only four chose to attend …

• Pro Vancouver’s David Chen;

• Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner;
• Independent Shauna Sylvester; and
• Vancouver First’s Fred Harding.

Three of the invited Mayoral candidates chose not to attend the NPA’s Ken Sim, independent Kennedy Stewart, and the Coalition Party’s Wai Young.
The evening was informative, as the Mayoral candidates addressed their policies on transit, child care, affordable housing & the livability of our city.
The evening was also informative for the politically astute — Pro Vancouver’s David Chen knew what he was talking about, and enunciated thoughtful positions on the issues, as did independent candidate for Mayor, Shauna Sylvester, the other two Mayoral candidates not so much.

As avuncular and well-spoken as Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner and Vancouver First’s Fred Harding proved to be, there was little that came out of their mouths that could be considered to be anything other than a egregious misrepresentation of the truth, indicating to anyone in attendance that neither man had anything approaching a command of city planning, leading audience members to the only reasonable conclusion: neither gentleman knew what they were talking about, and both meant to mislead and misrepresent, in service of their nascent mayoral candidacies.
For instance, on the issues, Messrs. Harding and Bremner weighed in as follows …

• Hector Bremner told the audience that “the reason rental housing isn’t being built in the city” is because Vision Vancouver extracts usurious community amenity contributions (CACs) from developers, as was the case recently with a developer “friend” of the affable Mr. Bremner, who he told those in attendance the city had required “millions of dollar in CACs that made the rental apartment construction “unviable.”

  Um, hmmm, no. In fact, developers who build purpose built rental through the city’s Rental 100 programme are NOT charged any CAC “fees” (building rental is good enough for the city), and as added incentive, the city allows the developer added height (for a tower, generally up to six stories), sometimes called bonus density. Hector Bremner is a current Vancouver Councillor — he oughta know better;

• Fred Harding, on the other hand, made a commitment to “free transit” for everyone should he become Mayor of the City of Vancouver following the October 20th civic election. There was no promise of a chicken in every pot, but there might well have been.

  Anyone who has the least awareness of what’s going on in respect of the transit file must be aware of Joey Hartman and the Metro Vancouver Alliance’s lobbying on transit with Shane Simpson and Mable Elmore, the provincial Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, respectively, Responsible for Poverty Reduction, and that this month the Minister will release his long-promised poverty reduction strategy, which in the short term will eliminate transit fares for children five to 12 years of age, and may do the same thing for children 12 – 18 (the latter is being discussed in Cabinet, and provincial NDP caucus).

  Furthermore, there’s a provincial plan in the works to reduce transit fares for those earning less than $40,000 a year. At present, 212,000 low income seniors and other eligible persons 60 years of age and older, and 128,000 British Columbians designated as persons with disabilities may avail themselves of the $45 annual B.C. Bus Pass programme Compass Card, while all senior citizens are eligible for the $55 monthly, three zone concession fare card. Great for Mr. Harding to appropriate a New Democratic Party and Coalition of Vancouver Electors (COPE) longstanding, and imminently implemented policy platform on transit.

To be fair to Messrs. Harding and Bremner, their misrepresentation of the truth didn’t hold a candlestick to Coalition Party’s Wai Young telling those in attendance at the recent S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Mayoral debate that “it is the Coalition Party that has long lead the fight against that damnable 12-foot wide asphalt bike path through Kitsilano Beach, and right through the children’s play area, jeopardizing their health.” Um, nnnnooooo …

So, Monday night’s Mayoral Forum wasn’t quite all that it was cracked up to be — 2014’s Mount Pleasant electoral forum was a barn burner, candidates sitting up on a raised stage, and the audience in such a state of high dudgeon that you could all but smell the blood in the air.
Still and all, a goodly number of people, concerned citizens all, turned up on Monday night at Heritage Hall, so at least that was heartening.

In 2018, one is left with a lingering impression, a sinking, almost forboding sense of dis-ease and collective anomie that this, the soporific 2018 Vancouver civic election has become one of the most numbing, non-issue driven, least contentious & most uninvolving municipal election campaigns Vancouver’s public has experienced in recent years — none of which feels good, or leads one to believe that we’re going to get the city we need.

Kennedy Stewart aka Mr. Bland seems to be the inevitable choice for Mayor — no matter how well Shauna Sylvester performs on the hustings — OneCity’s Christine Boyle and COPE’s Derrick O’Keefe seem not to have caught fire with the public (“c’mon now people, Derrick and Christine are the two most exciting, transcendently change-making and charismatic civic election candidates in 30 years!”), there’s no good (Vision) vs evil (NPA) narrative in this campaign, Vision is likely to get wiped out on election night, and no matter how transforming COPE’s and OneCity Vancouver’s campaigns are in this election — honest, they’re the saviours of our city, why don’t people see that? — the voting public seems capable of little more than an occasional sideways glance, and a drowsy attempt to stifle a yawn.

For the past five years, VanRamblings & the accomplished Robert McDowell have met once a month at Trees Organic on Homer Street to talk politics — but not just talk politics, rather to influence the decision-making that goes on both at Council and Park Board. More often than not, our respective and collective endeavours have proven successful in achieving a decision at Council and Park Board that best serves the public interest.

You won’t be surprised to read that Vision Vancouver challenged the ruling of the Honourable Supreme Court Justice, the ruling overruled in the always conservative Court of Appeals. For awhile, though, it looked good for us.

VanRamblings knows Rob McDowell. We know him to be a democrat, to not have missed a meeting of Vancouver City Council in seven years (sometimes, when he’s working in some far flung place across the globe, Rob will watch Council meetings through the video feed), to be eminently qualified to sit as a democratic and engaged member of Vancouver City Council, and to be your advocate at City Hall, the diplomatic and mediating force (working in concert with OneCity Vancouver candidate for Vancouver City Council, the estimable Christine Boyle) representing your dreams, your hopes and desires for a better, fairer, more diverse, friendlier and more welcoming Vancouver, breaking down the barriers of isolation that separate us, in the process building community, and a sense of place and of home.
VanRamblings asks that you save a vote for MCDOWELL, Robert when you go to the polls this month — you’ll be glad you did!

Hastings Community Centre all candidates meeting, featuring must-elect Vancouver City Council candidates, David Wong (Green Party) & Brandon Yan (OneCity), and must-elect Park Board candidates, Gwen Giesbrecht (COPE) and Shamin Shivji (Vision Vancouver)

Vancouver voters go to the polls three weeks from tomorrow, although for those so inclined, Vancouver civic election advance polls open on Wednesday, October 10th and run through October 17th — whatever the case, whenever it is you decide to cast your ballot for Mayor, City Council (10), Park Board (7) and School Board (9), please, please please keep yourself informed, and please vote for the progressive candidates running for office in this year’s critical-to-our-future Vancouver municipal election.
Advance voting locations, October 10 – 17, 8am til 8pm …

• Vancouver City Hall, 453 W 12th Avenue

• Roundhouse Arts & Rec Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews
• Britannia Community Services Centre, 1661 Napier Street
• Hastings Community Centre, 3096 East Hastings Street
• Renfrew Park Community Centre, 2929 East 22nd Avenue
• Killarney Community Centre, 6260 Killarney Street
• Trout Lake Community Centre, 3360 Victoria Drive
• Sunset Community Centre, 6810 Main Street
• Marpole | Oakridge Community Centre, 990 West 59th Avenue
• Kerrisdale Community Centre, 5851 West Boulevard
• Kitsilano War Memorial Community Centre, 2690 Larch Street
• West End Community Centre, 870 Denman Street

Next week, VanRamblings will publish a feature interview with our friend Rob McDowell, who is seeking a seat on Vancouver City Council, running as an independent in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election. Rob is a must-vote, one of the most brilliant men we’ve ever met, with broad support across our community, an individual who hasn’t missed a meeting of Council in seven years, and a future member of Council who will hit the ground running when he’s elected to office on Saturday, October 20th, to make life better for you (not to mention: the other Council candidates we’ll be endorsing, Christine Boyle, Derrick O’Keefe & Sarah Kirby-Yung, to name just three, who will find themselves over-the-moon at the opportunity afforded them to work with the accomplished & adroit Robert McDowell!).

There is no question Charlie Smith, the well-respected veteran editor of The Georgia Straight, is the most beloved journalist in our town — as has long been the case — loved not only by his peers, but the many thousands of his readers, and followers of all things civic, provincial and federal politics.

Now, we here at VanRamblings aren’t quite sure how Mr. Smith managed to acquire the transcript of the conversations the Devil recently had with many of the current and more serious (?) candidates for Mayor in the City of Vancouver, but he did — and for our amusement and edification, he published those conversations. We’re glad, and we bet you’re glad, he did.

Somehow, in these busy days, VanRamblings managed to overlook the independent candidacy for Vancouver City Council of Abubakar Khan, even though Charlie Smith identified Mr. Khan as one of the noteworthy independent candidates running for civic office in the current Vancouver municipal election. VanRamblings thanks our friend (and, as it happens, saviour — we’ll write about it someday), author Maureen Bayless, for bringing Mr. Khan’s recommendable candidacy to our attention.

As Mr. Khan wrote in a recently published article in The Straight …

My name is Abubakar Khan, and I’m running for Vancouver City Council to break down the pervasive isolation in our community, to help all of those of us who live in Vancouver to feel less alone and better cared for, to connect them to a government that cares, and neighbours with the time to know their names.

And that means doing two things.

First, it means dealing with the affordability crisis in an innovative way. It means supporting traditional policies — like creating high-density zones and using municipal funds to build affordable housing — while also partnering with the tech industry to solve local problems.

Second, it means tying people together, directly. It means securing full provincial coverage for psychotherapy, so we can have support when we really need it. It means more citywide events — food festivals, block parties, art projects — and cheaper community centre fees. It means building our shared memories together.