Category Archives: Vancouver Votes 2022

#VanPoli | Team for a Livable Vancouver Holds Its Founding AGM

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Architect & charter TEAM for a Livable Vancouver member Brian Palmquist speaks at TEAM’s AGM

Team for a Livable Vancouver, our town’s newest political party, held it’s first AGM on Sunday evening, an event open only to members of the nascent political party.

Jak King, a longtime Grandview-Woodland and community activist, was one of 12 policy committee speakers addressing Sunday evening’s AGM.

Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick was the evening’s keynote speaker.

Brian Palmquist, an award-winning architect, provided an Affordability Policy analysis at Sunday evening’s founding event, which took place at the Anza Club on 3 West 8th Avenue. Mr. Palmquist is the author of the substack newsletter, The PATH Project, where he reflects regularly on development in the city of Vancouver, recently emerging — along with UBC’s Patrick Condon — as an increasingly important voice in civic politics, and as a regular speaker at Vancouver City Hall debates.

Unlike the fancy soirées conducted by Ken Sim and his newly-formed A Better City municipal party, or Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver event, both of which drew dozens of well-heeled supporters — as well as all the press that matters (no journalist worth her or his salt foregoes a free meal), the founding TEAM AGM was — surprising to many — a members only event, a decidedly déclassé affair, with a solid and upbeat attendance, nonetheless, of those party members who’ve been working with Team for a Livable Vancouver founder, Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick, to transform Vancouver into a more “livable city” for all.

Sunday evening’s founding TEAM AGM — which, in the early going, would seem to be a no press ‘we don’t want any of those stinkin’ wretches‘ allowed — which for us would seem to comprise an kind of odd, almost stealth campaign for office, a members only ‘ if you don’t love us, we don’t love you’ civic party that somehow possesses definitive plans on sweeping to office at Vancouver City Hall, at Park Board and at School Board, come Saturday, October 15, 2022. Sunday’s AGM follows on the heels of a series of policy workshops organized by Councillor Hardwick in October. VanRamblings was unable to find anyone in Team for a Livable Vancouver to speak on, or off, the record about Sunday’s AGM.

Allow VanRamblings to say that we believe that come the latter part of September 2022, leading up to October 15th Vancouver civic election day, a groundswell of support for Team for a Livable Vancouver will embolden voters to cast their ballot for TEAM — despite whatever jerks like VanRamblings have to say on the matter, in the months leading up to next year’s Vancouver municipal election — and that TEAM will sweep to victory, in the same manner COPE did in 2002, and Vision Vancouver achieved in 2008, surprising many.

TEAM’s October 24th Policy Conference, where 12 groups developed TEAM party policy

VanRamblings was told, simply, to wait for a series of announcements and a new and dynamic party website that will emerge throughout the month of December.

TEAM’s founding Board of Directors, former Green Party civic candidate and architect, David Wong; longtime community activist Sal Robinson; current Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick; founder of the VanPoli Facebook group, community activist, and Oscar-winning animator (and probable TEAM Park Board candidate), David Fine; and outgoing TEAM Board member, Sean Nardi.

As Sean Nardi wrote in the hours following the TEAM founding AGM …

“TEAM elected its first, 9-member Board of Directors, a talented, concerned group who bring a diversity of skills, experience, knowledge and perspectives to guide TEAM’s evolution.”

For the moment, the party is playing its cards close to the vest, and at least for now the party has taken down both of its websites, the initial https://voteforteam.ca/, and more recently, http://www.teamlivablevancouver.ca/.

It would seem that, arising from VanRamblings persnicketyness (there are those who employ harsher language), Team for a Livable Vancouver moved up the début of its audacious and snazzy new website, which may be found at …

https://www.voteteam.ca/ 

VanRamblings had been told that TEAM’s webmaster was something of a perfectionist — you can see for yourself what that means (pretty great, we think).

VanRamblings received a call from a TEAM founding member, this a.m. …

“Ray, I think you’re going to be impressed with who the nine people are who were selected as TEAM’s new Board members. They’re a pretty impressive group, who in the days and weeks to come will play an ever increasingly important role in working to develop policy, and a narrative on what TEAM stands for. Over time, Colleen will play an ever diminishing role in directing the affairs of the civic party she has worked so hard to create. Colleen will turn her focus to becoming Vancouver’s next Mayor on Saturday, October 15, 2022, and carrying her team to office.

The announcement of the new Board members, and the launch of the new website , will occur in short order, perhaps as soon as next week. The launch of Team for a Livable Vancouver bodes well for all of us, and most particularly, for the citizens of Vancouver.”

VanRamblings awaits future Team for a Livable Vancouver announcements.

#VanPoli | Trans Rights | Never Let Hate Nor the Politics of Expedience Win

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Former British prime minister Tony Blair. (Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Tony Blair, and the Rise of Lowest Common Denominator Politics

Like your uncle in the family group chat, in these pandemic times of ours, Tony Blair has once again given his unsolicited opinion on politics.

The former three-term British Labour Prime Minister has urged Britain’s main opposition leader, Labour leader Keir Starmer, to “reject the wokeism of the minority” if he wants to win the next general election.

In a blistering appraisal of the Labour Party leader, Blair blasted the party’s decline. The hard left, Blair wrote in the foreword of a new report into Labour voters published this past Friday, November 26th, by the firm Deltapoll for the Tony Blair for Global Change Institute, must be considered the “enemy”.

Blair urged Labour to adopt a “commonsensical position on the ‘culture’ issues”, likening Labour’s current situation with voters to 1983, when the party was pelted over its support for LGB(T)G2+ rights. Blair argued that “large numbers of Labour voters in 1983 felt our economic policy was not credible and our attitudes across a range of cultural questions profoundly alienating”.

Tony Blair said Labour must ‘turn a corner’ under Sir Keir Starmer to win the next general election

Blair has long felt that trans rights – the rights of one of the most marginalized and vulnerable demographics in the country — are part of a culture war that Labour must distance itself from, at one point warning Labour to not “look askance” at JK Rowling over her views. Veteran moderates such as Blair himself, he said, “don’t quite understand the strength in feeling over issues such as trans rights”. To speak out for trans rights, he said, is an “electoral off-putting position for Labour”.

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews, the disabled and homosexuals for Germany’s decline. Within a dozen years, the Nazi regime murdered 6 million Jews, and 2 million disabled persons & members of the LGBTQ community.

Throughout our history, members of the gay community have had no rights, have lived in the shadows. All that changed in the 1970s with the rise of the gay rights movement, made ever more urgent when AIDS disproportionately affected that community. Even as recently as 2005, former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton didn’t recognize the gay community as having inalienable rights, never mind the right to marry.

More change was wrought when, only six years ago, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges that a fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Fourteenth Amendment, and that states must allow same-sex marriage.

Paul Martin’s Liberal government legislated same sex marriage in 2005.

Canadian astrophysicist Amita Kuttner, interim leader of the Green Party of Canada, and the first transgender, non-binary leader of a Canadian political party.

Here we are in 2021.

Which much discriminated against and disenfranchised group of citizens among us is left for us to blame our tales of woe on? Donald Trump had a ready answer to that question: members of the transgender community, who he ordered on April 12, 2019 to be discharged from service in the U.S. military.

“The Trump Administration is built on demonizing minority groups; reversing the civil rights gains of immigrants, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ movement. We cannot let an incompetent administration guided by a petulant bigot stand as the mascot of our time,” wrote Harper Jean Tobin, Director of Policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, in 2019.

President Joe Biden reversed, then eliminated Trump’s execrable order.


What’s wrong with us? Why isn’t Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung our most sought after, most inevitable 2022 star candidate for Mayor of Vancouver? #DraftSarah

In 2021, no thinking and compassionate person would come out against the rights of our immigrant communities, our black and Asian populations, our Jewish community, the rights of girls and women to lead productive lives, nor deny the inalienable rights of members of our LGB(T)Q2+ communities.

Yet, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair not only finds it acceptable to dehumanize members of the trans community, but actually gives instruction to Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, to work against the interests of the transgender community, as he believes support for trans people is “alienating” for the working class British electorate who might otherwise vote for Labour, were it not for Labour’s turn to what he terms as ‘wokeism’.

Note should be made, too, that not one of Vancouver’s announced, or projected, 2022 Mayoral candidates — ABC’s Ken Sim, the NPA’s John Coupar — although, John did retweet the Bloedel Conservatory’s acknowledgement —  Progress Vancouver’s Mark Marissen, TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick, Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young, nor anyone associated with OneCity Vancouver, the Greens or COPE, acknowledged the Trans Day of Remembrance, on Saturday, November 20th.

Into Light shares the story of a mother and child undergoing a transformative exploration of gender identity | Directed by filmmaker Sheona McDonald | Provided by the National Film Board of Canada

If our projected 2022 Mayoral candidates have failed to acknowledge our transgender community, at least someone at Vancouver City Hall has.

#VanPoli | Meet Vancouver’s Next Mayor | Jody Wilson-Raybould

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Vancouver’s next Mayor, Jody Wilson-Raybould, principled and a voice for our city, and our nation

The woman pictured above, former federal Liberal Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould — although something of a polarizing political figure, and although she has yet to announce her bid to become Vancouver’s next Mayor — come Saturday, October 15th, 2022 will become Vancouver’s 41st Mayor.

Possessed of great integrity — for which she is justly famous, and highly regarded — incredibly bright, accomplished, articulate and human in a way one rarely finds in the political realm, Jody Wilson-Raybould will likely announce her bid for the Mayor’s chair in early 2022, not out of any cynical calculation, but because Ms. Wilson-Raybould is a protector of our land, our city, and possessed of the kind of integrity that is all too rare in Vancouver politics — which is to say, she’s not involved in politics to enrich her bank account, or find herself beholden to developer interests — but honestly believes that she possesses the innate knowledge on the functioning of government and how best to achieve one’s policy goals, the heart, the humanity and the wit essential to emerge not just as the leader of our city, but a leader across our nation, as Vancouver’s necessary voice on the national stage.

VanRamblings believes that Ms. Wilson-Raybould will announce her candidacy for Mayor in the new year, following a series of meetings with the membership of the Coalition of Progressive Electors — represented by Jean Swanson on Council — and OneCity Vancouver, represented on Council by Christine Boyle.

Given that Ms. Wilson-Raybould is known for doing her homework, and given that affordable housing and human-scale development in Vancouver are key issues of concern for the voting electorate, Ms. Wilson-Raybould will also seek out the learned counsel of Patrick Condon, the James Taylor chair in Landscape and Livable Environments at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, among a host of other academics who care deeply for our city, including Simon Fraser University’s Andy Yan and Josh Gordon, and UBC’s Scot Hein, a highly-regarded former city planner.

Calgary’s new and first woman Mayor, Jyoti Gondek

Calgary’s new Mayor Jyoti Gondek — the first female Mayor in the city’s history, who on her way to victory, defeated 26 challengers to replace outgoing Mayor Naheed Nenshi; Montréal’s re-elected Mayor Valérie Plante, who defeated incumbent mayor Denis Coderre in 2017, trouncing him again last month.

In Nunavut, the Nunavut News stated a new trend had emerged in the territory of young women in politics, as 24-year-old Ningeolaa Killiktee was elected Mayor of Kimmirut, and Pam Gross as Mayor of Cambridge Bay. In the Northwest Territories, one media outlet stated that “Female candidates swept the municipal elections in the NWT,” and the CBC reported the victories of female Mayoral candidates in Hay River, Inuvik, Fort Smith and Yellowknife.

Canadian feminist and Mayor of Ottawa, Charlotte Whitton, was the first woman Mayor of a major city in Canada, serving from 1951 to 1956 and again from 1960 to 1964. Whitton was a Canadian social policy pioneer, leader and commentator, as well as a journalist and writer.

Janice Rhea Reimer became the first female Mayor of Edmonton, Alberta, serving in that capacity from 1989 until 1995. Saskatchewan Mayor Sandra Masters was sworn in as Regina’s 35th Mayor, after having swung to victory as the next year city’s first elected female Mayor, on November 23rd, 2020.

Kate Rogers elected as Mayor of Fredericton in 2020, the first woman to hold the position

Toronto Mayors June Rowland & Barbara Hall, Montréal’s Valérie Plante, Edmonton’s Janice Reimer, Regina’s Sandra Masters, Calgary’s Jyoti Gondek, Ottawa’s Charlotte Whitton, Cambridge Bay’s Pam Gross & Kimmirut’s Ningeolaa Killiktee, Halifax’s Moira Leiper Ducharme (1991-1994), Charlottetown’s M. Dorothy Corrigan, St. John’s Suzanne Duff, and Fredericton, New Brunswick’s current Mayor, Kate Rogers — all duly-elected Mayors of Canadian cities.

Whither Vancouver?

Every Mayor of Vancouver, from Malcolm A. MacLean in 1886, through until Kennedy Stewart today, have been white men of privilege more often than not elected to serve the monied interests of our city. Why is it that in 135 years, the good citizens of Vancouver have never seen fit to elect a woman as Mayor of our city, when almost every other city in Canada has seen fit do do so?

In all likelihood, Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick will throw her hat into the ring to become Vancouver’s next Mayor.

Rumour has it, too, that former Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer is considering a bid to become Vancouver Mayor. VanRamblings’ sources have told us Coalition Vancouver’s Wai Young is set on running for office, as Mayor, in next year’s Vancouver civic election.

Andrea Reimer, former Vision Councillor (l); Adriane Carr, Green Party; Wai Young, Coalition Vancouver

The Green Party of Vancouver’s Adriane Carr is also reportedly considering a run for Vancouver’s top elected office next year.

And there remains to this day, the persistent rumour that current populist and well-schooled Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung may also run for office as Mayor in next year’s municipal election.

A surfeit of qualified women candidates for Mayor of Vancouver, any one of whom would well represent our city, should she be elected to the office of Mayor in the 2022 Vancouver civic election, only 321 short days from today.

#VanPoli | The 2022 Mayor’s Race | They’re Off and Running | Part 2

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Colleen Hardwick, TEAM Vancouver, running against incumbent Mayor, Independent, Kennedy Stewart

In the next month or so, current and sitting independent Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick — who is at present seeking the Mayoral nomination with the recently-formed Vancouver municipal political party team … for a livable vancouver — will, in all likelihood, announce at the end of the nascent civic party’s upcoming AGM that she has won the TEAM Mayoral nomination, and will officially announce her bid to become Vancouver’s next Mayor, on Saturday, October 15, 2022.

Colleen Hardwick’s platform?

The platform has occurred as a function of a series of policy meetings TEAM conducted on October 24, 2021. VanRamblings would understand that Ms. Hardwick and the TEAM candidates who will soon be announced will prioritize …

  • A return to neighbourhood democracy, where residents in the 22 neighbourhoods across Vancouver will be empowered to formulate policy affecting their neighbourhood, and will be listened to when decisions are taken at Vancouver City Hall;
  • A move away from podium and high-rise tower-driven plinth construction, in favour of medium-and-low-rise, largely wood frame townhouse, affordable apartment and rowhouse construction, along arterials, and along some residential streets;
  • At Park Board, a re-prioritization of elected Park Board Commissioners as stewards of our parks and recreation system, while working to develop policy to strengthen our community centres, and developing new public pools and parks;
  • A commitment to sustainable fiscal management at City Hall that will reduce annual property tax increases, while prioritizing the delivery of core city services;
  • Arts & culture, transportation, reconciliation, public safety and security, finance and administration, economic development, climate emergency, and School Board policies that were decided on at the October 24, 2021 TEAM Policy Conference, and set to be announced at the upcoming team … for a livable vancouver AGM.

The team … for a livable vancouver AGM will take place either before year’s end, or early in the New Year / first quarter of 2022.

According to a Research Co. poll published in The Vancouver Sun on June 23rd, early pre-election polling has incumbent Mayor Kennedy Stewart with an almost insurmountable lead, and a 49% approval rating among the Vancouver electorate.

Note should be made that the Research Co. poll was commissioned by the Vancouver and District Labour Council , which represents more than 100 Vancouver-based unions. The Labour Council endorsed Kennedy Stewart as their Mayoral candidate in the 2018 election, and has announced their intention to do so again in the lead-up to the 2022 Vancouver municipal election.

Not everyone is thrilled with Kennedy Stewart, though.

Mike Howell, longtime and well-respected Vancouver civic affairs columnist, in a column published in Vancouver is Awesome, posted the question, Why is a former Vancouver councillor bringing developers to meet the mayor?

“Former Vancouver City Councillor Raymond Louie has been advocating for some of the city’s high-profile developers and joining them in a series of private meetings at City Hall with Mayor Kennedy Stewart. Louie participated in seven meetings in February and March in the Mayor’s office, which included Ian Gillespie of Westbank Projects Corp., Bruno and Peter Wall of Wall Financial Corporation, and Brian McCauley of Concert Properties.

Louie, who served 16 years on Council with COPE and Vision Vancouver before retiring (prior to the 2018 election), also met three times by himself with Stewart, according to the mayor’s monthly calendars posted on the city’s website. The frequency of Louie’s visits to City Hall are in contrast to a major plank of Stewart’s election campaign in which he called for new conflict of interest and lobbying rules for elected officials and senior staff members.”

Meanwhile, The Tyee’s Paul Willcocks took Stewart to task last year for his “painfully lame” response to police reform.

“There are 11 municipal police forces in B.C., including Vancouver … Stewart chairs the 9-member Vancouver Police Board, but he’s the only elected and publicly accountable member. The Police Act says Police Boards are responsible for determining the ‘priorities, goals and objectives of the municipal police department.’ But they are also required to “take into account the priorities, goals and objectives of the Council of the municipality.”

If Stewart and Vancouver’s Councillors agreed on measures to combat systemic racism — and shared them publicly — the Police Board would have to respond, or be held to account. That doesn’t take (a provincial government) review, as Kennedy Stewart suggested. No. It just takes leadership.”

VanRamblings believes Kennedy Stewart to be Vancouver’s worst, most inept Mayor since Jack Volrich was elected Mayor in the late 1970s.

Kennedy Stewart has proved throughout his term in office to be a feckless leader, given to whining about a “lack of support” from senior levels of government on the housing file, objectively the worst Mayor of any major Canadian city when it came to responding to the COVID crisis we’ve been living through over the past 20 months, and given to taking positions on issues that rather than serve the public interest, serves the plundering interests of Vancouver’s development community.

Two examples of how Kennedy Stewart serves the development community, rather than interests of all of us who call Vancouver home …

Councillors reject Christine Boyle & Kennedy Stewart’s developer-friendly motion

On May 28th, Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle brought forward a controversial motion that would allow projects up to 12 storeys to be built across the city, sans public hearing and community input, a proposal Boyle had worked closely on with Mayor Kennedy Stewart before bringing it before Vancouver City Council.

Boyle and Stewart’s cynical proposal called on the City’s Planning Department to come up with suggestions that would allow 12-storey, so-called ‘social housing’ developments in areas designated for apartments, without the benefit of a public hearing that would allow neighbourhood resident comment. The following Vancouver neighbourhoods would have been impacted were Boyle’s and Stewart’s motion to pass: Fairview, Grandview-Woodland, Hastings-Sunrise, Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Kitsilano, Marpole, and Mount Pleasant.

The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods posted a statement online on May 16th in opposition to Boyle’s and Stewart’s motion.

“This will increase development pressure, increase rental inflation, gentrification, demovictions, and displacements for existing older more affordable rental buildings,” the coalition said. It noted that existing rents in older buildings “tend to be much lower than new rentals, sometimes even lower than typical subsidized social housing rents, while existing older units are also generally larger”.

The Coalition also reiterated its longstanding objection to the city’s definition of social housing that allows 70% of the units at market-rate rents, but counts entire projects as 100% social housing “when it is mostly market rents”.

“It’s the carrying on of the policies that were established during the Vision administration, and the staff who was in place then is still in place now, and is simply carrying on with these things,” Larry Benge of the Coalition said, “and unfortunately, staff is directing the way this Council is approaching housing policies.”

Boyle and Stewart’s motion offered a cynical sinecure to the development industry that would allow developers to designate an entire building as ‘social housing’, when in fact, 70% of such proposed units within a 12-storey tower would be made available at market rental rates (generally $2150 for a studio, $2575 for a 1-bedroom, $3100 for a 2-bedroom, $3722 for a 3-bedroom), with the remaining 30% of units available at 20% below the going market rates, rather than the much more affordable 20% below CMHC-determined median rental rate — resulting not only in unaffordable housing units for the vast majority of Vancouverites, but creating unnecessary, counter-productive land inflation across the city.

When the motion failed (miserably) — as well it ought to have —  both Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Councillor Christine Boyle’s OneCity Vancouver municipal party sent out withering funding letters to their supporters, derisively calling out those who had voted against this ‘very important equity motion’.

Balderdash.

The bottom line, for the beleaguered citizens of Vancouver: the majority of Vancouver City Councillors saw through Boyle’s and Stewart’s cynical, developer-friendly ruse, voting against the Boyle/Stewart motion, voting in favour of democratic citizen engagement in the planning processes in our city’s neighbourhoods.


REJECTED | City of Vancouver Real Estate Department Plan for False Creek South

When the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department put forward a proposal to Vancouver City Council that would have laid waste to False Creek South, and turned this friendly, low-and-medium-rise townhouse and four-and-six storey apartment-style, and largely housing co-operative neighbourhood into a mirror image of the podium and high-rise tower-driven plinth False Creek North neighbourhood, Mayor Kennedy Stewart was first out of the gate to sing the praises of …

“The new False Creek South Plan”, Stewart wrote, “will add more than 4,600 new below-market and market rental, strata, and co-op homes, so thousands of more Vancouver residents can enjoy the benefit of these publicly owned lands. Great cities like ours can never stand still. We must always examine whether our city is meeting our needs, both for today and tomorrow.”

Too bad that the 171 articulate and informed speakers who appeared before Council to denounce the Plan were so moving Council unanimously rejected the Plan, preserving the heart of our city for generations to come. Notice how in the graphic below, Kennedy Stewart has ‘changed his mind’ on the appropriateness and efficacy of the City’s greed-driven plan for False Creek South.

Kennedy Stewart’s last minute change of heart: rejects greedy False Creek South Plan

As might be expected, one of Kennedy Stewart’s main rivals for Mayor of Vancouver in 2022, the very bright and principled Mark Marissen, takes the Mayor to task for re-announcing and re-launching proposals already soundly rejected by Council. “This is not leadership,” writes Mr. Marissen.

Seems that other of Vancouver citizens — you know, the ones that Research Co. didn’t call — are among the many who find Mayor Kennedy Stewart wanting, in the integrity and climate emergency departments …

Make no mistake, Kennedy Stewart retaining power at Vancouver City Hall for a 2nd term will prove no easy task, for reasons other than you’ll find above. That issue, though, will be the topic of Thursday’s VanRamblings column.