Category Archives: #VanPoli Civic Politics

#VanPoli | City Council | The First Day of the Rest of Their Lives

November 12, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Mayor and Vancouver City Councillors group photo in Council chambers on inauguration day Vancouver’s new City Council meeting for the first time, l-r: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Colleen Hardwick, Pete Fry, Adriane Carr & Mayor Kennedy Stewart + Councillors Melissa De Genova, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung, where in City Council chambers 10 motions will be presented for a vote

Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 marks the first day that the newly-elected Mayor and 10 City Councillors get down to business, with a raft of motions due to hit the floor, either in late morning, or after the lunch break — it’s going to be a busy day at Council (which doesn’t sit well with retired City Councillor George Affleck, as may be seen in his cautionary tweet below).

Even so, there’s work to be done, campaign promises to be kept, even if such does occur amidst the 30-day intensive orientation process to which our new Mayor & Councillors continue to be subject through December 7th.

Did we mention that former Park Board Chairperson Sarah Kirby-Yung is our favourite newly-elected City Councillor — which takes some doing, cuz we just sorta love all of our new City Councillors (and Mayor), and what a great communicator we’ve long known Councillor Kirby-Yung to be, and of how much she is on your side, and how much she wants work to “work across the aisle”, for you, to bring good governance to City Hall, as she knows our Mayor and all of our new City Councillors intend and will strive for …

At Tuesday’s first official “business meeting” of the new City Council, there are controversial motions, and some not quite so controversial.
On the relatively non-controversial side of the ledger (at least, let’s hope the motion emerges as non-controversial) is Councillor Pete Fry’s motion on the creation of A Renter’s Office at the City of Vancouver, long overdue, an idea that all three of our new Mayor, Kennedy Stewart, Councillor Fry, and Councillor Christine Boyle (who has seconded Mr. Fry’s motion) talked about on the campaign trail, and intend to represent the interests of renters.

Councillor Colleen Hardwick’s motion seeks to eliminate duplexes across a large area of Vancouver currently zoned for single family residences. Duplexes: eliminating this form of “gentle density” ameliorates Vancouver’s affordable housing crisis how? The Straight

On the more controversial side of the ledger, unsurprisingly given what we know of the mover of the motion, there’s Councillor Colleen Hardwick’s motion to dump the duplex, which strangely and perversely seems to have some support on both sides of the aisle at City Hall, the near unanimous “duplex motion” passed by the previous Council designed as one of many measures to create “gentle density” and increased affordability in single family neighbourhoods throughout the city (full disclosure: VanRamblings’ daughter, husband and two grandson’s live in & own a duplex in Kitsilano).
Before continuing, VanRamblings’ readers may want to look at Jennifer Bradshaw & Albert Huang article in The Straight, which reads in part …

“Duplexes were the first step city staff recommended under the last council toward increasing “missing middle” multifamily homes in the city, as part of an affordable housing plan. Before this, all multifamily homes, including duplexes, rowhouses, social and co-op homes, were banned on 75 percent of Vancouver land, and only the most expensive type of home, single-detached houses (historically known as “single-family houses”) were allowed.

The new councillor’s move to reinstate the ban on duplexes is the polar opposite of the direction Vancouver should be going for …”

At the very least, response to Councillor Hardwick’s motion oughta be interesting (which, as we all know, constitutes the old Chinese curse).

Social Housing. 58 West Hastings. What the site could be (left), what it is now (right).

Again, before continuing, it’s worth reading Nathan Crompton, Steffanie Ling and Caitlin Shane’s June 19, 2018 column, Battle for 58 West Hastings: Broken Promises and Co-optation in The Mainlander.
Here’s the bottom line: after years of activism by Jean Swanson, Wendy Pedersen, Ivan Drury, residents of the Downtown Eastside, and activists citywide, in 2011 Gregor Robertson and the members of his Vision Vancouver Council team “purchased” 58 West Hastings from developer Concord Pacific, swapping 58 West Hastings for another site at 117 East Hastings. Soon after the swap, on the steps of the Carnegie Centre, Mayor Robertson announced that it was his intention and the intention of Council to develop 130 units of social housing on the 58 West Hastings site.
Seven years on, regrettably and egregiously no such work has begun, as Vancouver’s homelessness housing (and opioid) crisis continues to burgeon.
To begin the process of addressing that appalling situation, at Council on Tuesday, newly-elected Vancouver City Councillor Jean Swanson will introduce a motion to “recommit (Council) to the community vision of 100% welfare / pension rate community controlled social housing and the former Mayor’s promise for the site at 58 West Hastings Street.”
Now, there are seven more motions that are due to come before Council on Tuesday, ranging from a motion by Councillor Swanson to protect woebegone renters from renovictions and aggressive buy-outs by developers, to a motion by Mayor Kennedy Stewart to strike an emergency opoioid task force, all of which motions (and more) may be found here.

Here they are: your new Mayor & City Councillors, in chambers and ready to get to work

Vancouver City Council meetings are live streamed here, and are available online afterwards. Tuesday’s Vancouver City Council meeting will begin at 9:30am, with all of our electeds chipper, in place and set to get to work.
This is your city, folks, and your new Vancouver City Council — who mean to do well for us. It’s worth taking a boo at the work in which our new Mayor and Council mean to engage, to break down your sense of isolation, anomie and cynicism, and to engender hope for our future.

#VanPoli | Generational Change at Vancouver City Hall

November 8, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Vancouver’s new City Council, l-r: Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Colleen Hardwick, Pete Fry, Adriane Carr and Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Councillors Melissa De Genova, Jean Swanson, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato, and Sarah Kirby-Yung

In 2015, when Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau was sworn into office as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister, as he and his family alighted from the bus that brought he and his family, and his new cabinet for the Swearing-In Ceremony at Rideau Hall on that sunny, chill November 4th 2015 afternoon, the first thing you noticed was not just the gender balance, but the relative youth of the cabinet he had selected to make decisions on behalf of Canadians. The average age of age of his cabinet is 50.7 years, the youngest cabinet in Canadian history, signaling generational change.
From 29-year-old Burlington MP Karina Gould, the youngest elected person ever to sit in cabinet, who was given responsibility for Electoral Reform after 31-year-old Peterborough — Kawartha MP Maryam Monsef, an Afghan refugee, was made Minister of the Status of Women, to 45-year-old François-Philippe Champagne, who represents the riding of Saint-Maurice — Champlain in the House of Commons of Canada, who was made Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and 39-year-old Ahmed Hussen, a former National President of the Canadian Somali Congress, who was made Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship for the Government of Canada, generational change was brought to the Cabinet decision-making.
Note. 35-year-old Bardish Chagger, MP for Waterloo, Ontario, assumed the responsibilities of Leader of the Government in the House of Commons on August 19, 2016, in addition to the responsibilities she already held as Minister of Small Business, while 36-year-old Canadian MP for Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Mélanie Joly became Minister of Canadian Heritage, and now the Minister of Tourism, Official Languages & La Francophonie.
A young cabinet lead by a 43-year-old Prime Minister with a young family represented what VanRamblings had written about during the six-month lead-up to the 2015 Canadian general election: generational change.
With the midterm election in the United States just complete, not only have we witnessed more women elected to government in the United States than ever before (110 women in Congress, double the number of only two years ago), what we also witnessed was (you guessed it): generational change, the average age of Congress almost a decade younger than the last Congress, from 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (the youngest member ever elected to Congress) to Abby Finkenhauer — who is just a few months older — who flipped an Iowa seat from red to blue, and who ran on a platform of worker and reproductive justice; Max Rose, a Purple Heart veteran, registered nurse Lauren Underwood, water rights attorney Xochitl Torres Small, openly bisexual newcomer Katie Hill, and Colorado’s first black Congressman Joe Neguse — all of whom are under 35 — lowering the average age of a Congressperson from 58 years to 49 years.

Look at the photo directly above & what do you see? Generational change.
Councillors Rebecca Bligh, Christine Boyle, Pete Fry, Melissa De Genova, Michael Wiebe, Lisa Dominato and Sarah Kirby-Yung — seventeen to thirty-nine years younger than outgoing City Councillors Raymond Louie, George Affleck, Elizabeth Ball, Tim Stevenson, Kerry Jang (and Geoff Meggs & Tony Tang, before them): all, together, representing generational change.
No more will Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor Melissa De Genova, and City Council’s new Budget & Finance Director, be made to feel that, as she expounded on the campaign trail, and as she has written many, many times that, in the last term on Council, she was designated to the role of “a child sitting at the kid’s table”, her intelligence and her passion for social justice ignored by her “older” Council colleagues.
VanRamblings continues to be heartened at the election of persons of conscience to Vancouver City Hall, and the wisdom of voters in selecting what we continue to believe will emerge as the most progressive Vancouver City Council in more than 46 years. Whether by dint of youthful vigour and the ideals and passion of a millennial generation of decision-makers at Council, or the youthful and progressive ideas of Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and Councillors Colleen Hardwick, Adriane Carr, and Jean Swanson, hope lies on the near horizon toward realizing a fairer and more just city for all, and very much the city we need, representing every citizen of Vancouver.

#VanPoli | Missing Persons | City Councillors Go Into Hiding

November 7, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Photo | Courtesy of Vancouver City Councillor Lisa Dominato’s (bottom left) Twitter feed. Pictured, our newly-inaugurated and outstanding Mayor and Vancouver City Councillors.

Monday evening, VanRamblings was afforded the opportunity to speak with Vancouver City Councillor Rebecca Bligh at the inaugural for the newly-elected Commissioners on Vancouver Park Board, Ms. Bligh the calmest and most zen presence we’ve experienced in the past year & a half of our life.
During the course of our very pleasant conversation, VanRamblings congratulated Councillor Bligh on her recent appointment as the newly-elected Council delegate to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), an important post working with other Canadian municipal governments in determining policy on urban and rural development in municipalities across Canada, the FCM an advocacy organization comprised of civic delegates who work together on issues critical to all Canadians and the life our cities, towns and villages, and of our nation, on issues ranging from affordable housing, public infrastructure, transit, international trade and co-operation, immigration and refugee settlement, to emergency preparedness, clean water and climate change and resiliency, and more.
Councillor Bligh — as we say, a beatific presence — told us how much she was looking forward to collegial work with Mayor Kennedy Stewart and her fellow, newly-elected contingent of very bright, accomplished and well-versed City Councillors, and her upcoming work with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. In respect of the latter, Councillor Bligh indicated to us that she would transition consult with her predecessor on the FCM, retired City Councillor Raymond Louie, a recent Federation President.

Sarah Kirby-Yung, Mayor Kennedy Stewart and her fellow Councillors embark on a 30-day orientation

Some years ago, when new members were elected to Vancouver City Council, the newly-elected Councillors were subject to an intensive two-day orientation. When Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to Vancouver City Council in 2014, she was subject to a two-week orientation. In 2018, our Mayor and eight newly-elected Councillors, and two incumbents will participate in a full 30-day orientation, set to end on Friday, December 7th.

The expanded orientation, conducted by city staff, is designed to apprise the incoming Mayor and 10 newly-elected City Councillors on all the motions passed by the most recent City Council, all the issues that came before that Council and previous Councils, and all of the issues that are due to come before Council in the coming months, ranging from the work of the Community Land Trust to the North-East False Creek Development Plan, and much more. By the time the orientation is complete, Mayor Kennedy Stewart and our 10 City Councillors will find themselves completely apprised, enabling them to hit the ground running in the new year.
From the beginning of the day Monday thru Friday, until day’s end after they’ve put their reading for the next day on their bedside nightstand, our Mayor and City Councillors will find themselves both busy and engaged, the information with which they’ll be presented the gift of a lifetime.

You’ll notice that the headline to today’s column reads: Missing Persons | City Councillors Go Into Hiding. Around these parts, we call that hypberbole, VanRamblings’ stock in trade.
Often, VanRamblings’ headlines and some of what we write are meant as a clever (sometimes too clever by half, it would seem of late, given the feedback we’ve been receiving) means of grabbing readers’ attention. Clearly, our Mayor and newly-elected City Councillors will be neither missing, nor be deemed to be in hiding — our benign intention was simply to point out that our newly-electeds will be busy over the course of the next month, and largely unavailable to the public as each is oriented to Vancouver City Hall, and the exigencies & responsibilities of their new jobs.
The other day, in respect of the responsibilities that Councillor Boyle had been assigned by Mayor Kennedy, we wrote …

” … this upcoming April, the sure-to-be-weary Councillor Boyle will sit in the Mayor’s chair as Deputy Mayor — she’ll likely ask her husband to bring their young son to Council Chambers to see his mom when she’s Chairing a Council meeting. Of course, by April, Councillor Boyle will have proved so busy with all of her various appointments, committee work, and work on Council that her son may not recognize her in the fourth month of next year, for wont of her involvement in his life.”

The above is an example of hypberbole, exaggeration for effect, a means for us to not only report that Councillor Boyle is bound to be busy in the coming months, but to point out that it must become necessary to all of our City Councillors to find some life balance given their newfound, awe-inspiring, and time and psychologically consuming elected responsibilities.
Clearly, Councillor Christine Boyle loves her children and her husband, her friends, her extended family and her fellow activists — of that, there should be no doubt in any one’s mind. Now, Councillor Boyle has not expressed concern to us for writing what we did above about her son not being able to recognize her — the suggestion, she knows, on its face is quite ludicrous.
Still, we feel it necessary to “explain ourselves” not because we have to, not because Councillor Boyle or any other person has suggested such to us, but because we wish to clarify to all VanRamblings’ readers, we live and are informed by the Hippocratic oath, “Do no harm.” We mean no harm, ever.
And, yes, our 2018 apology tour will be ending soon, and no, we’re not going to cease using hyperbole — going forward, when we employ hyperbole it will be for good only. It’s sorta like VanRamblings (aka Raymond Neil Tomlin) employing the third person in our writing — it’s meant to create a sense of ironic distance, no matter how serious our intent and perhaps, too, to enhance the entertainment value in what we write. I mean, who wants to read dry academic, rhetorical text? Not me!
VanRamblings wishes you, all of our newly-electeds and all of us who share a tiny bit of this paradise by the sea we call home, well, much joy & good.
Note to Councillors: Unless You Say It’s Off the Record, It’s …

Retired Vancouver City Councillor George Affleck, smiling, cuz he’s no longer on Council!

Do you recall in the summer of 2017, approximately eight days after Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director late one night called The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza and engaged in a frank, late night, profanity-ridden rant with Mr. Lizza? And do you recall that Mr. Lizza reported out on that conversation, and only 10 days into his White House tenure, Mr. Scaramucci was forced to resign (soon after which, his wife left him and filed for divorce)? Yeah, that intemperate Anthony Scaramucci.
Some years ago, soon after being elected to Council in 2011, VanRamblings found ourselves engaged in an in-depth, inside baseball conversation with Vancouver Non-Partisan Association City Councillor George Affleck.
About 30 seconds into the conversation, Councillor Affleck said, “Stop. I want to make it plain, Raymond, that whatever is said in this conversation is off the record. Going forward, unless I have given you express permission to report out on something I’ve said, all future conversations we might have should always be deemed by you to be off the record. If you agree to my condition, we can continue this conversation.”
I agreed, and we did.
If the dozens of “interview subjects” with whom I have engaged over the past 50 years had set a similar condition, their lives would probably have proved a great deal more pleasant and rewarding.
Over the years, I have broken more stories based on conversations with people who knew that I was a reporter / journalist, and who should have known as well that our conversation was on the record, unless otherwise stipulated. They failed to recognize such, and in consequence, their lives changed, and in consequence injustice was addressed & change wrought.
Our new City Councillors, many unsophisticated in the ways of journalism as she is practiced in Vancouver and elsewhere, and forthcoming as each might wish to be, must also consider the import of their words and ask themselves, “Would I like what I’m saying to Mike blasted across the front page of a local newspaper, or become the lead item on the evening news?”
In most instances, reporters try to protect their sources, often protecting them from themselves (here, I think of one elected in particular). Part of the 30-day orientation will most assuredly address relations between electeds and the media. The new Mayor and Council will have to develop a relationship with the media that is somewhat, if not a great deal, more transparent than the previous administration, whose 43-member Communications Department acted as a barrier to communications, frustrating the hell out of the media (it’s sorta like every Human Resources Department I’ve ever engaged with in my adult life, which department might better have been called Inhuman Resources).
A word to the wise for our Councillors: protect yourself in the clinches, be trusting, but wary, be open but place what you’re saying into context.

#VanPoli | Vancouver Park Board | 2018 Inaugural Swearing In

November 6, 2018#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Park Board, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

At a moving ceremony held last night at the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, the outgoing Vancouver Park Board Commissioners met for a final time, providing those in attendance with a video celebration of Park Board’s achievements over the past four years.
Then it was time to introduce and swear in the new 2018 – 2022 Park Board Commissioners (pictured below). Green Party Commissioner Stuart Mackinnon was elected as Park Board Chairperson by acclamation, and his Green Party colleague, Dave Demers, was elected Vice-Chairperson of Park Board. COPE’s Gwen Giesbrecht won election as Park Board Committee Chairperson (where all the action goes on), while the NPA’s Tricia Barker becomes Vice-Chair of the Park Board Committee.