In this, the summer of our political discontent, no Vancouver civic party (save, perhaps, COPE - the Coalition of Vancouver Electors) has been left unscathed by party in-fighting and the ruinous politics of personal destruction — and none moreso than OneCity Vancouver, and their VDLC-endorsed candidate for City Council, Brandon Yan, who while fighting for a “kinder, more just, and more equitable Vancouver” has consistently been made the target of an ongoing untoward, unconscionable and entirely despicable wholesale attack on his character, his heart-filled candidacy, and the edifying and entirely necessary tenets of his party’s platform — where the provision of truly affordable housing stands at the centre of its civic election program — which OneCity Vancouver has assiduously championed on the party’s indispensable Twitter feed throughout these summer months.
In July, given the political climate of our times, Mr. Yan made the entirely necessary decision to delete his old tweets from his Twitter feed, which as The Straight’s Travis Lupick wrote in a column published July 24th “he would have been stupid not to, (given that) an embarrassing old message posted on Twitter or Facebook can torpedo a politician’s entire career.”
Bad enough that holier-than-thou ProVancouver council candidate, and recent NPA member, Raza Mirza, wrote in a tweet published on July 23rd …

“How can people trust you, @CitizenYan, to bring transparency to decisions making at #Vancouver city hall, when you started by hiding all your Twitter history?” wrote Mirza, a Vancouver resident active with the advocacy group Housing Action for Local Taxpayers (HALT).”

Make of the following what you will (all grammatical and syntactical errors are Mr. Ileman’s). Here’s what Restore Vancouver party founder and Vancouver’s newest municipal election mayoralty candidate Steffan Ileman posted to us yesterday afternoon (graphics inserted by VanRamblings) …

Steffan Ileman, the new candidate in the mayoralty race in Vancouver, British Columbia calls it ethnic cleansing of Canadians as more property owners sell out to Asian millionaires and leave the city. He says this is not only ethnic cleansing, but cultural cleansing as well since many businesses are also forced to shut down or leave due to exorbitant rents or property taxes. He says this massive foreign financial intrusion into Vancouver real estate is depriving Canadians and their children of a future in Canada’s Pacific port. As mayor he will do everything possible under the city’s legal jurisdiction, including expropriation, to stop this process.

An entrepreneur with extensive experience in international trade and the air passenger sales business, Ileman came to media attention last summer when he led a protest movement against the proliferation of concrete-separated bike lanes that created traffic gridlocks. He says the bike lanes were a diversion from the real issue: build as many cubicles in the sky as possible for sale in Asia. The city council has turned Vancouver into a toxic concrete jungle unprecedented in the city’s history. As Mayor, Ileman will declare a two-year moratorium on development and renovation permits.

Ileman experienced first-hand the ill effects of an ill-advised city council decision when he personally had to endure a renovation permit issued by the city for replacement of windows with all tenants inside. His two cats died in the toxic environment created by the construction in the building due to government negligence with respect to the safety of tenants. It turned out that through an ill-advised new city bylaw his new windows can only open 4 inches at the bottom, blocking 90-percent of fresh air intake for his suite in the 60-year-old building. Ileman says Vancouver condos built or renovated under this bylaw are unhealthy and unfit for human habitation. He has asked BC Premier John Horgan to rescind this bylaw, and the city’s authority to pass its own building code.

Steffan Ileman is running under the banner Restore Vancouver, a municipal party he created. He will field other candidates for Councillors in the October election. He says the main objective of Restore Vancouver is to create a referendum system using digital technology, a first in Canada, for real, participatory democracy. Ileman also intends to lobby for the people of Vancouver in the federal and provincial capitals. He says carbon tax is a scam that will do nothing to protect the environment.

Working with OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle and Brandon Yan, and the Green Party’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, together these Council candidates of conscience would constitute the working majority at City Hall post October 20th, where they would set an agenda focused on ensuring that all families would be afforded safe, secure housing at affordable rates.
Sound like a pipe dream? Not on your life.

In COPE candidate for City Council Derrick O’Keefe, Vancouver now has our very own articulate, inspiring and winning social justice fighter, kin to Seattle’s much-beloved Kshama Sawant, New York City’s wildly popular Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Victoria’s Ben Isitt — someone who will stand up for you, for the planet, and for the folks who live in your neighbourhood.
All elections are crucial, but none more so than Vancouver’s 2018 municipal election. Derrick, Jean Swanson and Anne Roberts not only promise change, each is committed to achieving and accomplishing change for the better that is fair, just and serves the interests of the many over the few.
Surely, heading into the 2018 Vancouver civic election, you don’t want more of the same, the politics of meanness and scarcity, the continuing ugliness of the depletion of our city’s physical and social environment, made even more grave and consuming of our every waking thought by the grip of Vancouver’s ever-worsening affordable housing crisis, a ruinous city and province where the redistribution of money from hardworking British Columbians like you and me serves only to line the pockets of the idle and undeserving, at the continuing insupportable expense of our families.
The Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, Yes Vancouver, Wai Young’s so-called Coalition Party and Fred Harding’s Vancouver 1st civic parties promise only austerity, wont and increased social and economic anxiety, and a tragic political paradigm that promises an even more virulent attack on the social and economic interests of working people, in order that the interests of the economically privileged few might be better served.

The 2018 Vancouver civic election is about nothing less than the survival of our community, how going forward we will we organize our communal life and rule ourselves compatible with our economic and social interests.
In 2018, the choices we will make at the ballot box are stark: a vote for COPE’s Anne Roberts, Derrick O’Keefe and Jean Swanson, OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle and Brandon Yan, and the Green Party’s Pete Fry and Adriane Carr — complemented, perhaps, by Rob McDowell, Sarah Blyth and Sarah Kirby-Yung — or the irrecoverable ruination of our city and our physical environment. October 20th: the choice will be yours to make.