Category Archives: Vancouver

#VanPoli | The Only Two Vancouver City Councillors Assured Re-Election

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In 355 days from today, the citizens of Vancouver will go to the polls to elect our next Mayor, and the 10 duly-elected Vancouver City Councillors who will make decisions on our behalf between November of 2022 and late October of 2026.

Most elections are the “throw the bums out” kinds of election, whether it be provincially, federally or municipally. The level of dissatisfaction with our elected officials is near off the charts these days. In Vancouver in 2018, a Vision Vancouver administration which held majority government for 10 years in our city were thrown out on their ears, with only incumbent, 19-year elected trustee Alan Wong surviving as the party’s sole elected representative, to Vancouver School Board.

As dedicated and hard working as are the entire contingent of our elected representatives at Vancouver City Hall, history — and the recent ‘change elections’ that were held in Calgary and Edmonton — tells us that the electorate are in a finicky mood, dissatisfaction with municipal elected officials is through the roof, and any objective analysis of electoral re-election prospects for our not-ready-for-prime amalgam of 10 Vancouver City Councillors and incumbent Mayor are dire, indeed.

In today’s VanRamblings headline, we write that only two Councillors will be re-elected to office in 2022. Should Coalition of Progressive Electors Councillor Jean Swanson opt to run for a 2nd term of office — by the time the 2022 Vancouver civic election rolls around, Ms. Swanson will be 80 years of age. Should she be re-elected on October 15, 2022, she would complete her next term of office at age 84. Joe Biden is the same age as Jean Swanson and appears to be doing well, and is set to run for re-election in 2024 — so “age” ought not to be a consideration in one’s re-election potential. Willingness to work into our mid-80s? There is that.

Councillor Colleen Hardwick would also be a lock to be re-elected in 2022 — we’ll explain why another time — but as it’s likely she’ll be the Mayoral candidate for the revived TEAM, that places her outside of the Councillor re-election sweepstakes.

Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry is a lock to be re-elected to Vancouver City Council in 2022. As many disparaging things as we may write about Pete, nothing but a cataclysmic event will prevent the affable, if paranoid, Mr. Fry to being re-elected to a second, thankfully post-pandemic term  at Vancouver City Hall.

Now, VanRamblings believes that Mr. Fry has served an inauspicious first term.

  • 1. When Pete ran for office in 2018, VanRamblings made him promise that he would respond to every telephone call and e-mail he received in his office at City Hall, and that he would meet with citizens in the community — a la former Mayor, the late Philip Owen, or former COPE City Councillor, Tim Louis — to help resolve issues of concern, such as clogged drains, or improper drainage, or the myriad issues homeowners have to deal with that, more often than not, requires intervention from City Hall. Did Pete Fry follow through on this sacred promise. Nope. No he didn’t.
  • 2. The first year in office, Pete held up decision-making around the Council table by plunging Council into “amendment hell.” There was no motion presented by a City Councillor that he did not seek to amend, dragging Council meetings out into hour upon hour of fruitless discussions on meaningless amendments that served only to inhibit decision-making around the Council table. VanRamblings was told by our sources at City Hall that it was not Pete who was drafting the amendment motions, but then City Manager, Sadhu Johnston — who wished to sandbag our newly-elected Council from achieving the goals which got them elected to Council.

    Apparently, Pete had struck a deal with Mr. Johnston that would see Mr. Fry resign his office as a Green Party Vancouver City Councillor in March 2022, pull a Fritz Bowers and take on a senior administrative position at City Hall. Ain’t heard nothing on that front in recent months, tho, so that outcome would appear now to be ‘moribund’.
  • 3. Pete Fry’s big claim to fame in his first couple of years in office, aside from obstructing Council from making decisions, was two fold: i) passing the all-important “trial” project on reducing vehicular traffic to 30kmh on residential side streets, and ii) protecting the interests of China at Union of B.C. Municipalities conventions, so China could continue to treat delegates to Chinese goodies — this while both Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were locked inside unlivable Chinese jails.

Now, as it happens, none of the three points made above matter a whit.

And why not?

Well, there are two good reasons that ensure Pete Fry will be re-elected.

As much as Pete Fry did not “de-escalate” the situation involving the Strathcona Park encampment resident, and as much as the “left” in Vancouver would disapprove of his intervention on behalf of his neighbour, that is not how the vast majority of the Vancouver electorate see Mr. Fry’s intervention.

Rather, the residents across the City of Vancouver see Pete Fry as a hero, a superman, a man who did what they would do in a similar situation — and that “belief” assures Pete Fry of re-election in 2022, as Vancouver’s Superman Hero, however much he would disclaim such an appellation or the accolations of Vancouverites.

Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry gives “good quote,” he’s become Global BC’s ‘go to’ guy for on camera interviews about decisions that are made around the Council table, he’s articulate, bright, affable, engaged, and willing (and able) to answer any question that is put to him by the media — as such, Pete Fry has emerged as one of the few stars on the current term Vancouver City Council. The role of the media is to act as the voice of citizens. Most other Councillors have avoided the media like the plague — not Pete Fry, who is accountable and available always, humble as all get out (on this Council, that’s saying something), with one of the great voices of all time — calm, measured, reassuring, down-to-earth, a just folks kind of guy who is simply impossible to dislike.


Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung at Council, with Lisa Dominato to her right

And then there’s VanRamblings’ favourite member of Vancouver City Council (even if she’s not a particularly big fan of ours … alas, it was always thus) — yes, we can hear you Councillors Melissa De Genova and Colleen Hardwick — we love you, too.

Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung is not just VanRamblings’ favourite Vancouver City Councillor, she is — along with Vancouver West End NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert, and B.C. Minister of Health, Adrian Dix (and if Patti Bacchus were an elected figure) — our favourite British Columbia elected official.

If Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle has emerged as the current Council’s biggest disappointment, activist City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung (a one-time Park Board Chair) has fulfilled her promise as an elected Councillor, and much more.

Not to pick on Councillor Boyle (yet again), Sarah Kirby-Yung is the complete social progressive on Vancouver City Council. Articulate, bright, incredibly hard-working, some have derided Councillor Kirby-Yung as a “populist” (the same appellation has been applied to Councillor Fry) — if that’s the case we’ll take a heaping handful of Ms. Kirby-Yung’s populism each and every day, and twice on Sunday.

The “mother” of the pandemic patio movement in Vancouver (now set to become a permanent summertime feature) is — yes, you guessed it — Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung. In addition, Ms. Kirby-Yung is the push behind the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship race next year, an all-electric race set to take place in the city’s False Creek neighbourhood over the July 2022 long weekend.

“Formula E is a win on so many levels, from being a net-zero event that supports sustainable transportation to being a huge boost for our hard-hit tourism sector, our residents and our local economy,” Vancouver City Councillor said in a news release.

One year ago, Councillor Kirby-Yung was the big push behind a mask mandate for inside city facilities — a motion that went down to flaming defeat thanks in part to the fact that Pete Fry hates Councillor Kirby-Yung — there’s just no accounting for the ill motivations of some of our childish elected officials at Vancouver City Hall.

If the media loves Pete Fry — and they do — they’re absolutely infatuated with Ms. Kirby-Yung, for whom being in elected office means being available 24-7, always available not just to those in the working press, but to everyone, all Vancouver residents across the city, Ms. Kirby-Yung as a true blue advocate for all that is good and necessary and, as we’ve written previously, the one true Mayor of Vancouver.

Elected life, though, is not easy for Ms. Kirby-Yung. When she and Councillors Lisa Dominato, Rebecca Bligh and Colleen Hardwick left the Non-Partisan Association political party fold to sit as independents, the question arose as to the fate of each Councillor leading up to the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

We already know that Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick has re-formed her father’s old progressive party, TEAM, and for some time now, rumour has had it that Peter Armstrong has reached out to Rebecca Bligh to join with Ken Sim in the nascent, but well-funded, socially progressive A Better City Vancouver civic party.

Whither then Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, and her equally progressive colleague, Lisa Dominato (architect of B.C.’s SOGI 1 2 3 programme)?

Will Ms. Kirby-Yung (and Ms. Dominato) join their Council colleague Colleen Hardwick, and join with TEAM to seek a Council nomination? Nuh-uh. Not much likelihood of that. How about traipsing over to Ken Sim’s ABC, with Rebecca Bligh? Maybe, a possibility, we’ll see. Or, how about Ms. Kirby-Yung joins with her old (and young at heart, and socially progressive) Park Board colleague John Coupar, who is running with the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) as their Mayoral candidate?

Most folks — as in the vast majority of the electorate, well north of 90% in the months leading up to early October 2022, when VanRamblings predicts there’ll be a record low voter turnout — are unaware of the inner machinations of Vancouver politics, but they do know about the NPA. Or maybe Mark Marissen is chasing after Ms. Kirby-Yung to join his Progress Vancouver campaign for Vancouver civic office.

As we stated at the outset of our coverage of Vancouver civic politics, and next year’s Vancouver municipal election, “round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows.” More VanRamblings civic coverage, hopefully tomorrow.

#VanPoli | The Worst Council in 50 Years?

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The current Vancouver City Council is the worst, most inept, least productive, least progressive City Council Vancouver citizens have witnessed in 50 years.

In the amalgam of Green Party, OneCity, COPE and “independent” (formerly Non Partisan Association) Councillors, we have a group of 10 Councillors and a Mayor who cannot seem to get along with one another, do not work in common cause to benefit the electorate, and genuinely don’t like one another.

Burnaby City Council vs Vancouver City Council, 2018 – 2022

In May 2019, Burnaby City Council adopted a ‘best in Canada’ tenant assistance policy that provides support for tenants displaced from rental buildings with 5-plus apartments, mandating developers cover tenants’ moving costs (up to $1,400), and pay the difference between a tenant’s current rent and the rent in the new building tenants move to, while providing the …

Right of first refusal to displaced tenants to move into the replacement building once construction is complete, at the same rent as they paid before being displaced (subject only to the provincially mandated maximum annual increases), as well as mandating that developers will again have to cover moving costs when tenants move back into the new building.

The Burnaby City Council tenant assistance plan created inclusionary rental zoning bylaws, which requires of developers one-to-one replacement of demolished rental apartments, and that at least 20% of new housing developments in Burnaby will be secured as rental, in perpetuity.

Did Vancouver’s City Council’s purported, on the side of working people ‘left saviour’, OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, or the three-person environmental Green Party contingent, the Mayor, or any one of the five (now former) Non-Partisan Association City Councillors even consider implementing a tenant assistance policy similar Burnaby’s — and, now, New Westminster, as well?

Not on your life they didn’t, a point made comprehensible in the tweet below.

As Charles Menzies — a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia — wrote on Twitter yesterday in response to VanRamblings’ Tuesday column, about how some folks have deemed current Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick to be “right wing”, he wrote …

Tom ‘Not So Terrific’ Campbell, controversial Vancouver mayor, 1966 to 1972

In 1966, running as an independent, a brash Tom Campbell defeated Non Partisan Association mayor, Bill Rathie, to become Vancouver’s 31st mayor. From the outset, Campbell heralded a pro-development ethos that would make even Vision Vancouver (not to mention, our current City Council) blush, as he advocated for a freeway that would cut through the downtown east side, demolish the historic Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, and bring about the construction of a luxury hotel at the entrance of Stanley Park, as well.

Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood, circa 1960, pre high-rise construction

In the West End, where Campbell — a wealthy developer — owned substantial properties in the neighbourhood, the newly-elected Mayor all but ordered the demolition of almost the entirety of the well-populated West End residential neighbourhood — housing mostly senior citizens in their single detached homes — as he made way for the rapid construction of more than 200 concrete high-rise towers, irreversibly transforming Vancouver’s West End … forever.

All of these “changes” augered controversy among large portions of the Vancouver populace, leading to vocal, often violent protests throughout Campbell’s treacherous tenure as Mayor, finally leading to his defeat at the polls in the November 1972 election, with the election of a majority, progressive T.E.A.M. (The Electors’ Action Movement) Vancouver civic administration.

Mayor Art Phillips discussing his legacy project, the Property Endowment Fund

Since 1972 and the election of the T.EA.M majority Vancouver civic government, whatever their stripe over the years — Non Partisan Association, COPE or Vision Vancouver — have strictly adhered to the dictum of Abraham Lincoln, “a government for and by the people.” Can the members of our current City Council honestly say that their primary goal is to serve the “public good”?

How Can VanRamblings Write That The 2021 City Council is the Worst in 50 Years?

A diverse — not — set of Vancouver City Council aldermen, circa 1933

Say what you will about Vision Vancouver Councillors.

At least they got along with one another, and saw themselves as a team working to make Vancouver a greener and more  livable city, while also working to achieve the laudable goal of eliminating homelessness in our city.

Vancouver’s current Council? How do they fare in an objective analysis?

Unlike any City Council elected to Vancouver City Hall over the course of the past 50 years, the current contingent of Vancouver City Councillors have steadfastly continued to spot rezone across the city, causing land prices to skyrocket, while not listening to the citizens who elected them to office.

Absolutely bereft of humility, most of the 10 members of Council have arrogantly set about to enact policy that is “good for us” because ‘our’ Councillors “know better” and were elected to govern not listen — despite what the citizens of the city say we all need — all the while building ever more unaffordable condominium and market rental complexes.

All this while barely paying lip service to the provision of “social housing” and “affordable housing” — which Council continues to define in the same manner former Vision Vancouver Councillor Kerry Jang elucidated as …

“Affordable housing is something that somebody can afford.”

Isn’t it so much hyperbole to call this Council the worst in 50 years?

To deny the Councillors their innate humanity, while failing to take into account that all 10 Councillors and our Mayor are dedicated servants of the people, who week-in and week-out work anywhere from 50 to 75 hours a week, more often than not sitting in Council chambers from 9:30 a.m. until 11 p.m., on behalf of and in the social, financial and environmental interests of  Vancouver citizens, as creditable and exemplary servants of the public good?

Maybe.

Over the next 360 days, leading up to the upcoming and always critically important Vancouver civic Election Day, on Saturday, October 15, 2022, VanRamblings will set about to support the claims we make, while introducing you to the next contingent of civic candidates seeking elected office in Vancouver.

#VanPoli Politics | The Pending Chaos of the 2022 Vancouver Civic Election

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In somewhat under a year — Saturday, October 15, 2022 to be exact — the next Vancouver municipal election will take place, when a Mayor and 10 City Councillors will be elected to civic office at Vancouver City Hall in our fair city by the sea.

Although VanRamblings will not commence intensive coverage of Vancouver’s next civic election until sometime in the spring of 2022, there is enough going on politics-wise in our city to comment on the state of municipal political affairs — which is what VanRamblings will set out to do over the next couple of weeks.

Why all the hubbub about Vancouver politics in the autumn of 2021?

When our NDP provincial government brought in legislation governing the conduct of municipal elections — limiting / eliminating third party advertising in the three months prior to the election date, while also limiting the expenditure of monies each civic party, and candidate, could spend towards the goal of achieving civic office — the doors were left wide open to spend any amount of money in the civic arena prior to the exertion of British Columbia’s civic election “restriction date”.

Thus you have A Better City mayoral candidate Ken Sim — who in the 2018 Vancouver civic election ran as Mayoral candidate for the Non-Partisan Association, coming within 1,000 votes of becoming our city’s Mayor — holding a campaign kickoff and fundraiser this past Wednesday at Chinatown’s Floata Seafood Restaurant, where all of Vancouver’s esteemed civic reporters were on hand to nosh on food, and otherwise kibbitz with one another and attendees at this swish municipal affairs soirée. That Peter Armstrong (Mr. Sim’s main financial backer, who introduced Sim to civic politics), he sure does know how to put on a feed.

Current Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart has announced that he’ll seek re-election in 2022. Longtime political fixer and campaign strategist extraordinaire, Mark Marissen, has announced his bid for Mayor, as has current Park Board Commissioner John Coupar. Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick has also served notice that she will seek the Mayoral nomination with  a reinvigorated TEAM (The Electors Action Movement) civic party — that’s five mayoral candidates.

VanRamblings believes that the 2022 Vancouver municipal election will prove to be the ugliest and most divisive civic election ever waged in our west coast burgh, that there’ll be no end of bad behaviour from the myriad candidates putting their names forward in the hope of gaining office and tenure on Vancouver City Council, that OneCity Vancouver — and more particularly, OneCity Vancouver’s resident ‘mean girl’ Council mainstay, Christine Boyle — will run a vicious campaign of unrivaled and unmitigated class warfare against the parties and candidates OneCity has already successfully defined as “right wing”, with the media buying into this condemnable nonsense hook, line and sinker. Alas — it was always thus. ?

VIFF 2021 | Vancouver’s Beloved International Film Festival Wraps for 2021

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The 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival wraps at 11:59pm this Thanksgiving Monday evening — and that will be it for another Festival year, although what is now termed the VanCentre Complex (3 theatres now available in the complex that used to house just the glorious Vancity Theatre — which remains, just in case you thought that wasn’t the case) — with VIFF Connect a year-around fixture for this next year, and probably long after that into the many years to come.

On Sunday, VIFF presented two screenings of Céline Sciamma’s exquisite Petite Maman, Sciamma’s beautiful fairytale reverie, at the welcoming Vancouver Playhouse — occasioned by the dual mysteries of memory and the future — the film emerging as a resonant, profoundly moving and elegantly made small scale, but wildly effective opus for the 39-year-old French filmmaker, the dappled forested backdrop a thing of pensive beauty, the coming-of-age story at the centre of the film an example of the way cinema can make memories real, without losing their bitter honesty, and dreams, without compromising on their glowing promise.

Without a doubt, Céline Sciamma is the finest director working today, anywhere across the globe, her body of work — Tomboy (2011), Girlhood (2014), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), and now Petite Maman — unrivaled in the pantheon of modern cinema, each film profoundly moving and filled with heart, must-sees for any cinephile worth their salt, simply the finest examples of what cinema, in the right hands, can achieve in moving all of us forward towards a better, fairer world.

Here’s what Barry Hertz, arts & entertainment editor at The Globe and Mail had to say about Petite Maman, when it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last month …

Well, this is an unexpected and wonderful surprise. Two years ago, French director Céline Sciamma knocked TIFF audiences out with her powerful and grand romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Switching gears, the filmmaker goes small, in all the right ways, for her pandemic-shot follow-up, Petite Maman.

A lovely, delicate look at the bridge between parents and their children, the film follows one lonely little girl who, while visiting her grandmother’s old country home, encounters a version of her mother as a young girl at the same exact age, through some unexplained feat of magical realism.

Featuring wonderful performances from twin sisters Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz, and also the cutest little murder-mystery game you’ve ever seen, Petite Maman hits all the right notes, creating an epic in miniature. One warning: It may leave you a blubbering mess.

There is one final VIFF screening of Petite Maman— as always, click on the preceding link to be taken to the VIFF web page to book your ticket — scheduled for this evening at 8:30pm on this Thanksgiving Monday, at the Kay Meek Arts Centre, located at 1700 Mathers Avenue in West Vancouver, easily accessible by both car or bus (there’s a bus stop just outside of the arts complex). Highly recommended.