Here we are, just a tad more than three weeks away from Vancouver’s most consequential election in 50 years.
As a friend was saying to us at lunch yesterday, “No one wants towers built across our city. We want livable neighbourhoods, parks and recreation centres, schools and plazas, restaurants like this one where you can sit on the patio in the middle of the day and enjoy an afternoon repast with a friend. Towers? No thank you!”
Political campaigns rely on volunteers to go door knocking, work in the party’s telephone room, participate in burmashaves — that’s when you see a bunch of folks holding and waving campaign signs at you, when you’re heading off to work, or coming home — staff the campaign office, and work to secure the donations that campaigns for office require to create campaign literature, lawn signs, pay for the office, and fund the myriad aspects of a civic political campaign for candidates working towards being elected to one of Vancouver’s three civic bodies: Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board.
Incumbent COPE Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Gwen Giesbrecht, hosted a fundraiser / birthday party for herself and her friends — and COPE — on Saturday, September 17, at Riddim & Spice.
Then there are those Vancouver civic parties who mean good for our city, do not take real estate developer donations, and are seeking to represent you, not the billionaire real estate developers who would seek to destroy the city we love.
Those Vancouver civic parties who mean well, who need donations from you …
Vote Socialist , with Sean Orr as their sole Council candidate.
The 2022 Vancouver municipal election is critical to our collective future, and the choices to be made are stark: give the city away to the greed of developers and those developer-funded civic parties who are more than eager to sell us out.
Or support — and donate to — the Vancouver civic parties who mean well for our city (you can see those party’s names listed above), and their working class candidates of integrity who are seeking office in this year’s civic election.
Or, run the very real risk of destroying the future of the city you love, the treed neighbourhood where you live, the neighbourhood park just down the street, or the nearby community recreation centre, and the lush, green home that our city has been for decades — and may be no more should you not cast your ballot wisely — the city where your children and your grandchildren play, where your neighbours, friends and colleagues gather for picnics, or to play tennis or pickleball, rugby, or soccer, or who enjoy a friendly pick up game of hacky-sack, or baseball.
Just kiss the city of Vancouver you love and have loved for so long, good-bye … because that’s what’s at stake in the 2022 Vancouver municipal election should you not donate, and go to work for, and put up campaign signs for the Vancouver civic parties and their candidates of integrity, who mean well for the future of our city.
Truth to tell, VanRamblings despairs over the 2022 Vancouver civic election.
Not that Vancouver’s 2022 municipal election differs all that much from the Vancouver civic elections of 2011, 2014 and 2018: same partisan sniping, same crass behaviour from supporters — whether paid, or otherwise — emerging from the various parties, as well as the candidates themselves.
The people who shared that post are now volunteering with the civic party @OneCityVan. OneCity supporter James Wanless described me as "ape-like" just the other day.
— Rohana Rezel 🐘 @rohanarezel@vindi.ca (@rohanarezel) September 19, 2022
Among the electorate, anomie would seem to be the order of the day, with polls showing upwards of 40% of Vancouver’s electorate either undecided as to which party and which candidates they’ll be supporting as voting gets underway in as little as three weeks from now — if those citizens intend to vote at all, so alienated and cynical are they about the prospects of any of the parties, or their candidates, acting to build affordable housing for the average wage earner in Vancouver, or remedying an increasingly disturbing public safety issue in our city, where — as was broadcast on Global BC, recently — upwards of 1500 random, unprovoked attacks on innocent victims have occurred in Vancouver since the outset of the year.
VanRamblings is being inundated with assurances that Stanley Q. Woodvine “finding” Forward Together’s donors list last week was not serendipity, but a planned attack by those behind the ABC Vancouver campaign to wipe out their main competition. VanRamblings has been told “it’s all too coincidental“, that it was planned, and we’re naïve if we believe any differently.
Someone dropped a two-page spreadsheet printout on the south sidewalk of 300 block W Broadway. Appears to be a list of donors and donations. Who knows if it's legit? The donors names are eye-catching! #Vancouver#Vanpolipic.twitter.com/9i9yQ28FYU
Bad blood, and greed. Meanwhile, VanRamblings has also been told the development industry supporters of the Mayor’s Forward Together party hired a team of investigators awhile ago to dig up dirt on ABC Vancouver and the party’s Mayoral candidate, Ken Sim — and the party’s Council candidates seeking election, or re-election — which material when released will devastate the ABC Vancouver campaign for office, while severely prejudicing this second newly-formed municipal party’s chances for success at the polls next month.
VanRamblings was advised the developer backers of ABC — Rocky Mountaineer railroader, Peter Armstrong, and Lululemon founder, Chip Wilson — don’t want to share the wealth with the likes of Vancouver Canucks’ owner Francesco Aquilini, Concord Pacific’s Terry Hui, and all of the other developer supporters of our city’s beleaguered incumbent Mayor, Kennedy Stewart.
Vancouver civic politics: a tangled web has been woven in the 2022 civic election that could knock out both leading developer-backed municipal parties.
When VanRamblings arises from our slumber, we like to take a shower to wake us up. We have a shower radio to accompany us while showering, so we can listen to music. Of late that’s proven more and more difficult. Here’s why …
We have the radio tuned to 104.3 The Breeze. Turn on the radio: Ken Sim ad. Switch the station to Move 103.5. Ken Sim ad. Next up: 94.5 Virgin Radio. Ken Sim ad. Z95.3 FM. Yep, another Ken Sim / ABC Vancouver radio ad. Little wonder that Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver team are leading in the polls, given that they’re the only civic party running saturation radio ads across every demographic, while placing their increasingly sophisticated television ads on local evening news programmes.
Here’s what the latest internal party rolling polls are showing …
Otherwise, ABC’s Rebecca Bligh and Lisa Dominato have been bouncing in and out of the top 10, as has TEAM’s Sean Nardi, whose name appears first on the Council ballot voters will receive next month, and COPE’s Breen Ouelette, whose name appears second on the voters’ Council ballot.
Note should be made, as well, that standout Non-Partisan Association Council candidates Arezo Zarribian — one of VanRamblings’ very favourite candidates for office in 2022, whose name will feature prominently on our Women Council Candidates Endorsement List, in early October — and her very able, accomplished running mate, Cinnamon Bhayani (who we’re also pretty darn high on, for her integrity and élan), and our friend and longtime associate, Ken Charko, have also been featured in Council’s Top 10 candidates for election list sporadically, but quite often.
As is almost always the case when covering an election, there is far too much gamesmanship in the coverage and practice of politics throughout the election cycle, and too much reporting on the horse race aspect of media coverage.
Mayoral candidates, l-r: Kennedy Stewart, Colleen Hardwick, Ken Sim, Mark Marissen, Fred Harding
In an election, though, where voters don’t know where to place their vote, reporting on the placement of candidates for office, derived from both the leaked internal party polls, and the public polling you see reported online, on the radio, or during the evening news has a function — which is, the reporting of numbers and the foofaraw of the various shenanigans that help to define the election, generates voter interest, even if its prurient interest and not directed towards policy, or serious consideration of the issues that will determine the future of our beloved city.
Fifty years ago, as an editor at The Peak — Simon Fraser University’s student newspaper — VanRamblings wrote a weekly column titled Know Your Local Ruling Class, wherein we would interview a member of the administration, various heads of departments, activist students, and many others.
One particular week, it was our good fortune to interview the head of the fledgling university’s Philosophy Department, someone with whom we had a cursory relationship, given that early on in our university career we had met with him to ask for a late admission to a philosophy course, and another time when he had subbed in for a philosophy professor attending a conference.
As was our wont, as we did each week and as was the case in our interview with the head of the Philosophy Department, we posed the following question: What one foundational lesson have you learned in your life that has most shaped you, most changed you, made you more human, and a better, more accepting person?
The Professor offered a two word answer to the question: people change.
“Some years earlier, I had a student, a supercilious young man who rubbed me the wrong way. I thought him ambitious but insincere, too much ready to provide whomever he was engaging with the information he thought the person might want to hear, an inveterate manipulator of people so as to serve his own good, means and end, someone who if truth be told I found to be something of a detestable human being.
Toward the end of his second year at the university, much to my chagrin, he made the decision to declare a major in philosophy, for which endeavour he required my approval. As was my duty, the two of us met, and after some while, I granted his request to pursue an Honours degree in Philosophy within the department.
Just last year, after returning from a year long sabbatical, I was told that in my absence, the university had hired a new professor to teach in the department. Much to my dismay, I learned that this new professor was the student who had graduated some years earlier that I so detested, who had gone on to earn both a Masters degree and PhD in philosophy, with a focus on Epistemology, Ethics, and Logic. Of course, I was obligated to meet with him.
An offer was made to this newly hired professor to meet with me in my office one late morning, and perhaps go to lunch afterwards, which we did. To say that I was not looking forward to this meeting would be to understate the matter — nonetheless, we met.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered the young man who I had so detested had transformed into an engaging and authentic, mature young man, articulate and bright, well schooled in his areas of study and interest, and utterly charming and personable.
Not only did we attend lunch together, we continued our conversation throughout the afternoon and went out to dinner with a couple of colleagues, where the young man not only held his own, but led the group in a raucously delightful discussion.
Subsequently, with his permission, I sat in on a couple of classes he was teaching, and found him to be an inspiring and skilled teacher his students highly regarded, and if I might say, near worshipped, so engaging was he, such a compelling presence.”
As the good professor intoned: people change. No one of us, if we are possessed of any wit at all, are static in the conduct of our lives.
Such is true and we have found is more the case than that which we have witnessed over the course of the past four years respecting the transformation of 2022 TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick.
When Colleen Hardwick began her term in office, she was intent on embracing her father Walter Hardwick’s legacy as a city builder, and in a rush to burnish that legacy through the introduction of a generational, deeply citizen engaged consultation that would result in something she called The Vancouver Plan, the first motion she presented at Council early in her nascent term of office.
Colleen Hardwick and her daughter, Kathryn (Kat), at the 1984 Liberal Party leadership convention in Ottawa, fighting for child care, fighting for change, as she has always, throughout her life.
The orientation led by staff that took place in November and December 2018 was for her a distraction, a delay in getting started on the work that needed to be done to reclaim the city after 10 years of a Vision Vancouver administration.
The purpose of the orientation was successful in part, though, because for a time it brought the novice Councillors closer together.
Surprising to Ms. Hardwick was her developing affection and respect for newly-elected 35-year-old OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle who, Councillor Hardwick told VanRamblings during the 2018 holiday season, from whom she had “learned so much.”
“I was laser focused on affordable housing as a core focus of my time on Council. I discovered that the Council priorities of my fellow Councillors was not addressing the issue of affordable housing, but was instead focused on addressing our climate emergency, and reconciliation with our Indigenous Peoples.
Christine made it abundantly clear that British Columbians are living on stolen land, and that a necessary part of addressing the crucial issue of reconciliation was to move forward expeditiously on responding to the emergency climate crisis we’re all facing.”
Over the course of that holiday season, at the OneCity Vancouver Christmas party, VanRamblings had opportunity to mention to Councillor Boyle of Colleen Hardwick’s deepening affection and respect for her.
Ms. Boyle responded to VanRamblings by harrumphing, roughly pushing us aside and all but stomping across the room to speak with her acolytes. Soon after, at the beginning of 2019, Christine Boyle set about to create the despicable and wrongheaded narrative about Councillor Hardwick that she is “a rabid right winger,” an egregious notion which Ms. Boyle successfully promoted to the media and her fellow Councillors.
“I have identified as a left Liberal my entire adult life,” Ms. Hardwick has told VanRamblings, “and have worked with women to promote opportunity and fight sexism and misogyny, promoted the cause of unions as necessary to ensure the fair treatment of workers. To be dismissed as a right winger, is anathema to everything I’ve stood for, and worked for, over the past forty years.”
Early on in her Council term, Councillor Hardwick promoted The Vancouver Plan, as an idea whose time had come, an endeavour critical to the future of our city.
Unfortunately, the realization of The Vancouver Plan, as drafted by the City of Vancouver’s Planning, Urban Design and Development Services Department, and presented to Council in June of this year, bore no relation to The Vancouver Plan Ms. Hardwick had envisioned, as a deeply engaging, one-on-one community consultation, with people living in all Vancouver neighbourhoods.
Instead, at the direction of Council — in an anti-democratic amendment drafted by Councillor Boyle, and seconded by Councillor Pete Fry — the Planning Department was instructed to conduct the consultation sans involvement with the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods — which Ms. Boyle called “an extra legal form of government, unrepresentative and without foundation” — directing staff to conduct a consultation through Talk Vancouver, “the City’s online community of local advisors,” an unauthenticated tool of engagement, which when The Vancouver Plan was presented to Council, Ms. Hardwick referred to as “deeply flawed,” the methodology employed in consulting citizens a sham, telling her fellow Council members she was “deeply saddened” by The Vancouver Plan presented to Council, which she argued should have put housing affordability front and centre.
“One of the many flaws of the Plan,” Councillor Hardwick told Council, “is City planners and Council members’ assumption that adding new supply lowers the cost of housing.” Hardwick told Council “that since the 1980s, Vancouver has added more housing than any other major North American city and it is still the most expensive place to live. We’ve tried adding more housing to address the need for affordable housing, and it didn’t work. If you want to help the many residents who are leaving the city due to high rents, you should insist that, going forward, at least 30% of development be made available to average wage earners.”
Councillor Colleen Hardwick went on to describe her notion of gentle density, and environmentally sustainable wood frame and mass timber construction over the “egregious, greenhouse gas-emitting concrete towers the development industry so loves” that would become “the new Vancouverism, incorporating the worst elements of Manhattan & Hong Kong towerism, devoid of humanity or livability.”
Colleen Hardwick is no longer in such an unrelenting hurry to transform the development ethos of Vancouver, as a singular, exclusionary focus of her endeavours as an elected official at Vancouver City Hall now, her only priority.
“Reconciliation is a core value as City Hall, and central to the discussion on how we as a city should move forward toward a sustainable future,” Councillor Hardwick recently told VanRamblings, in conversation.
In addition to building affordable housing, Colleen Hardwick is now focused, as well, on a democratic plan that would move Vancouver’s electoral system towards a mixed representation model that would elect five Councillors at large, with an additional five Councillors held accountable for representing five distinct districts across the city. Also important to Ms. Hardwick, should she be elected Mayor of Vancouver: re-implementation of Philip Owen’s Four Pillars Plan, and appointment of a Commissioner to draft a model of engagement for the DTES that would more effectively address that which needs changing for the better on Vancouver’s DTES.
A renewed focus on the arts in our city, dance, theatre, and film; the necessity of increasing funding to Vancouver’s parks and recreation system, and the construction of new, or re-imagined, recreation centres, and increasing green space in our city; creating sustainable job growth to keep citizens living and working in our city; developing a model for citizen engagement to democratize decision-making in our city, giving people living in Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods a voice in the decision-making that will transform our city’s future.
Away from the toxic stew that Vancouver City Council became over the course of these past four years, not only has Colleen Hardwick grown, transformed, blossomed, transcended, she has developed into a passionate and charismatic figure in our city, an undeniable force of nature, perhaps the person on Council most committed to reconciliation, and most committed to addressing the ills of a downtown eastside to serve the interests of those who live in the area, through a revival of Mayor Philip Owen’s Four Pillars Plan, which rather than a purely a law enforcement issue Ms. Hardwick believes is a public health issue that could be tackled through a combination of prevention, enforcement, treatment, and harm reduction.
Make no mistake, Councillor Colleen Hardwick is the only serious-minded Mayoral candidate in this Vancouver civic election dedicated to serving the interests of all Vancouver citizens, and not just the monied forces who are funding the campaigns of ABC (A Better City?), and Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together ‘toward a dystopian future’ Vancouver civic party of destruction.
One month from today, voters go to the polls to elect a new civic administration in the City of Vancouver. Honestly, they oughta stay home.
Billionaire developers and wealthy millionaires have bought the 2022 Vancouver civic election, negating democracy, and the will of Vancouver’s citizens.
Bear with us while, as per usual, VanRamblings buries the lede.
This morning the Non-Partisan Association’s Mayoral candidate Fred Harding, incumbent NPA Councillor Melissa De Genova, and veteran Vision Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong — along with twelve other 2022 Vancouver civic election candidates — find themselves in Supreme Court responding to Vancouver Chief Election Officer Rosemary Hagiwaraha’s Court challenge seeking to declare that fifteen Vancouver candidates for office are not entitled to have their names on the ballot papers using Chinese, Persian or other non-Latin characters.
Seven term Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong sought re-election in 2014 and 2018 without Chinese characters, but included Chinese characters in his September 7th nomination documents. Vision Vancouver council candidate Honieh Barzegari used a Farsi font on her form, while Forward Together council candidate Tesicca Truong expressed a desire to use both Chinese and Vietnamese beside her name on the ballot.
Ms. Mah, a COPE candidate running for School Board, submitted her nomination with her English name and her Chinese name, telling the Vancouver Sun’s Cheryl Chan that the Chief Election Officer’s court challenge “sends a disturbing message that only anglicized names are allowed on ballots.”
“I’m known by my Chinese name by my family, and any time I talk to the Asian press, and they want to translate my name into Chinese. I wouldn’t want to just have my English name in print,” said Mah, who added that there needs to be a clearer definition of “usual name” established.
The two Vision candidates said they were dismayed to learn their usual names are at risk of being removed from the ballot, while the NPA candidates accused Ms. Hagiwaraha’s application as tantamount to cultural appropriation.
The Court is expected to rule on the matter before the end of the week.
Someone dropped a two-page spreadsheet printout on the south sidewalk of 300 block W Broadway. Appears to be a list of donors and donations. Who knows if it's legit? The donors names are eye-catching! #Vancouver#Vanpolipic.twitter.com/9i9yQ28FYU
Meanwhile Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his Forward Together civic party seem to be in a bit of trouble, following on the retrieval of a two-page spreadsheet printout of a list of Forward Together donors and donations.
The editor of The George Straight, Charlie Smith, calls Mr. Woodvine’s retrieval of the Forward Together donors list an astonishing find, given that the document includes a list of “captains” in what appears to be a fundraising document. Beside each name are the 2022 donations, followed by the goal.
Mr. Smith writes that the “captains” represent a surfeit of influential, well-heeled and wealthy Vancouver developers and real-estate executives, such as:
Arnold Silber, president, Value Property Group ($4,000 donations, $25,000 goal);
Terry Hui, CEO, Concord Pacific, the real estate development company that oversees the development of the Expo lands ($8,200 donations, $31,250 goal);
Stepan Vdovine, director, business development and corporate affairs, Amacon ($12,424 donations, goal $18,750);
Ian Gillespie, founder of Westbank Projects Corp. ($2,400 donations, goal $25,000);
… among a massive group of other monied Vancouver developers who appear set to donate to Forward Together;s campaign to the tune of millions of dollars.
As Mr. Smith wrote in The Straight at 2:41 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon …
Stewart’s party has not explicitly admitted that this spreadsheet was created by someone with Forward Together. But there is certainly circumstantial evidence. The name “Neil” shows up, as do the initials “NM”. Stewart’s chief of staff is Neil Monckton. There are also some names on the list with past associations with the NDP, which is a party that Stewart has represented in the past and which Monckton has worked very hard to elect. They include former B.C. NDP presidents Moe Sihota and Craig Keating.
Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Brahman writes that Neil Monckton, who is Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Chief of Staff, collects an annual $126,366 salary. Mr. Monckton has been on unpaid leave from the position since September 10th.
VanRamblings is struck by the notion that, although under provincial election legislation brought in by former Attorney General David Eby in 2018 to limit political party donations to $1250 per individual, Stepan Vdovine — Executive Director of Vision Vancouver until the party’s defeat in 2018 — has donated $12,424, just shy of ten times the allowed amount, while real estate marketer extraordinaire Bob Rennie donated $12,500, exactly 10x the allowed amount.
British Columbia’s next Premier, David Eby, weighed in on the controversy …
“Fundraising will always be part of politics, but some people are clearly frustrated that the rich are no longer able to buy convenient access to politicians with private $10,000-a-plate dinners or six-figure donations. We’re not going back to the bad old days,” Eby told the Vancouver Sun’s Dan Fumano. “If I am elected leader, our government will continue to monitor and improve our campaign financing laws where necessary to ensure that all people, not just the rich, get their voices heard during and after elections.”
One imagines the matter of developer donors exceeding the allowed election donation amounts has likely been referred to Elections B.C. for investigation, as requested by rival Vancouver civic party TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver.
“Vancouver voters need to know the truth about this alleged fundraising list before they cast their ballots — it’s critical that Elections BC find out what has actually happened and clear the air,” TEAM for a Livable Vancouver campaign manager and Council candidate Bill Tieleman, told The Straight.
VanRamblings learned yesterday that a high profile Council candidate in the current Vancouver civic election called the employer of a person working on a rival party’s campaign, insisting to this person’s employer that she must be fired from her well-paid job immediately, for “interfering in the election campaign,” the victim of this despicable actl distraught, arising from the actions of a contemptible candidate for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.
As we wrote above, the provincial NDP government brought in municipal election finance reform legislation in 2018, with strict campaign spending limits. As Dan Fumano reported in The Vancouver Sun on August 3rd, billionaire Lululemon founder Chip Wilson found a “work around” that would allow him to create a U.S.-style political action committees that — as the Witchita, Kansas-based billionaire Koch brothers have done for years, in the United States — would allow him, and other like-minded millionaires and billionaires, to funnel monies and finance “pro-business” politicians and political parties, all without breaching the tenets of British Columbia’s election finance reform legislation.
In 2021, Chip Wilson founded the Pacific Prosperity Network — a non-profit NGO — to work behind-the-scenes to finance right-leaning, free-enterprise municipal and provincial candidates, and “help” them get elected, to form government. In July of this year, Chip Wilson wrote a letter urging other wealthy people to contribute $50,000 to $200,000 each to PPN, saying he’d donated $380,000 to the cause (recently reported as a donation to ABC).
In Vancouver’s 2018 civic election, Mr. Wilson was a high-profile supporter of NPA Mayoral candidate Ken Sim. After narrowly losing to Mr. Stewart four years ago, Ken Sim is running again this year with the upstart ABC (A Better City). In an interview with ABC campaign manager Kareem Allam, Mr. Fumano was told …
“We appreciate Chip’s success as a businessman, but when it comes to politics, we’re not values-aligned. And he has no involvement on our campaign, other than those donations made a year ago.”
Yeah, sure, right. A $388,000 donation by Mr. Wilson to ABC (A Better City) — and, in Ken Sim, the party’s seemingly pliable and “co-operative” candidate for Mayor — is just peanuts, and as Mr. Allam states above, Chip Wilson’s “values” are not aligned with ABC (A Better City), clearly the civic party of Wilson’s choice, with the preferred Mayoral candidate running for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.
Here’s the rub: ABC (A Better City) and ABC alone possesses the civic election budget that has allowed ABC to buy saturation radio and TV advertising deriding Mayor Stewart for his alleged — and as as VanRamblings wrote Tuesday, untrue — intention to legislate mobility pricing in Vancouver, that would charge citizens $15 to $65 dollars for vehicular travel within the city, when mobility pricing is a regional issue years away from implementation, if ever.
VanRamblings was apprised Wednesday, Ken Sim and ABC (A Better City) are polling in the low-to-mid 30s range, with Mayor Stewart’s flailing and failing Forward Together campaign mired at 25% and falling, with Colleen Hardwick’s TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver way back at 16%, with Fred Harding’s NPA at 8% and Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver campaign barely registering at 6%, leaving the Greens, OneCity Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, COPE, and Vote Socialist to divide up the remaining twelve to sixteen per cent of the vote.
Internal ABC polling — reports are that ABC’s polling firm is making contact with up to 2,000 probable Vancouver voters daily — give every indication of an ABC (A Better City) sweep at the polls on Election Night, October 15th, an inevitability, when the nascent civic party will elect Ken Sim as Vancouver’s next Mayor, and all seven ABC (A Better City) City Council candidates for office.
The only question remaining open, then, is which two current candidates for office will form the official opposition on Vancouver City Council: the Greens’ Adriane Carr & Pete Fry; TEAM’s Bill Tieleman & Sean Nardi; Vote Socialist’s Sean Orr & COPE’s Breen Ouelette; Vision Vancouver’s take no guff Lesli Boldt, and Forward Together’s Dulcy Anderson; the NPA’s Melissa De Genova & Arezo Zarrabian; or, maybe, Progress Vancouver’s Morgane Oger will fill one of the two open slots on the next “give it all away to developers” City Council.
