Category Archives: #VanPoli Civic Politics

ABC Vancouver | Friends, Loyalty and High Regard Count for Something

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Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen, elected to office on the evening of Saturday, October 15, 2022

Vancouver City Councillor Mike Klassen is, and has been for a very long time, one of VanRamblings’ closest, and very best friends.

Not to get too maudlin, but Mike Klassen is an executor of VanRamblings’ will — the other two: current Vancouver School Board trustee, Christopher Richardson, and former Vancouver City Councillor, Colleen Hardwick. VanRamblings’ ashes will be thrown off the side of Peter Armstrong’s yacht, which will be temporarily ‘moored’ just off Locarno Beach. Colleen, Mike and Christopher will be on board.


Mike Klassen. On January 17, 2024 as Vancouver experienced a cold spell and a 20mm dump of snow

All of which is to say three things, if you’re wondering where we’re going …

  • VanRamblings has known and been close friends with Mike Klassen for 30+ years;
  • In the interest of full disclosure, VanRamblings’ readers should be apprised that you will never, ever, ever read material on this blog that in any, way, shape or form disparages Mike Klassen — although we reserve the right, from time to time, to be critical of a policy decision taken by the good and honourable Councillor;
  • As VanRamblings expressed to Mike Klassen during the course of the recent holiday season: “I will not allow a disagreement on the future of Park Board, or any other policy issue that may arise, to disrupt or in any way interfere with our friendship.”

In VanRamblings’ world, loyalty counts for something; for a great deal, actually.


Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, who topped the polls on election day, October 15, 2022

For many years now, Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung has been VanRamblings’ favourite political person in the province: a dedicated, exceptionally bright public servant, who works night and day for citizens (the hardest working pol we’ve ever experienced); and a politician who doesn’t always ‘play by rules’ — which we think, on occasion, is a good thing, a very good thing!

Sarah Kirby-Yung succeeded in having cetacreans — whales and dolphins — in captivity banned at the Vancouver Aquarium during her tenure as Vancouver Park Board Chairperson, despite the fact that the initiative was contrary to the policy of the political party she ran for office with in 2014.

Even in light of the current contretemps surrounding the Park Board ‘abolition’ issue that has caused VanRamblings much consternation, and about which we have been writing endlessly in recent days, our affection, regard and respect for Sarah Kirby-Yung has not lessened one iota — although, in the interest of transparency, we will write that Vancouver Kingsway MP Don Davies has (unknowingly) worked hard in recent days, weeks and months to displace Councillor Kirby-Yung from her august position as VanRamblings’ favourite political person in the province.

Of course, VanRamblings is hoping saner heads prevail at Vancouver City Council, that Councillors Kirby-Yung and Klassen will lead the charge to convince Mayor Ken Sim that the time has come to “pull a Doug Ford” — which is to say, reverse his shameful position on eliminating an independent, elected Vancouver Park Board.


Today, 9 a.m., Jan. 25, 2024 | Mayor Ken Sim announces transition team that will lead to abolition of an elected Park Board. Pictured: Mayor Sim, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Brian Montague, Lenny Zhou, Mike Klassen


ABC Councillors: Lisa Dominato, 2nd term on Council | Rebecca Bligh, 2nd term, Vancouver City Council

ABC Vancouver Councillors Lisa Dominato, initially Non-Partisan Association Councillors, who switched party affiliations to join the nascent ABC Vancouver civic party seeking office, are serving their second term at Vancouver City Hall.

VanRamblings has known the principled and accomplished Lisa Dominato dating back to the autumn of 2017, when she was elected to the Vancouver School Board as a Board of Education trustee in a by-election that year. A strategic leader with 20 years experience in government administration, public policy, communications and stakeholder relations, Ms. Dominato was responsible for the construction and implementation of British Columbia’s SOGI 123 programme, which provides guidance to educators across our province to help make schools more inclusive and safe for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI).

Rebecca Bligh is a passionate supporter of families, education and the environment who championed Vancouver’s diverse and inclusive communities in her first term of office — as she continues to do today — dedicating herself to helping make Vancouver a more livable city, while serving to address the affordability crisis and issues around public safety and the poisoned drug crisis, working in concert with her colleague, Lisa Dominato. Both make an invaluable contribution to our city.

On balance, VanRamblings believes ABC Vancouver had a good first year in office.

The ABC Councillors also brought a welcome civility back to the Council chambers.


Vancouver City Councillor Brian Montague | Lenny Zhou | and Vancouver City Councillor Peter Meiszner

All 10 Councillors and the Mayor worked as a team over their 12 months in office, arising from the expressed desire of Mayor Ken Sim to work collaboratively with “opposition” Councillors, One City Vancouver’s Christine Boyle —  who is having herself some kind of (great) second term —  and Greens Adriane Carr and Pete Fry.

There’s a tendency to dehumanize our elected officials — as if they’re not members of our larger family — to criticize the individual rather than the policy, to engage in the politics of character assassination over reasoned, thoughtful debate.

Was VanRamblings happy when the ABC Vancouver Councillors collectively decided to undo our City’s Livable Wage Programme, mandating that suppliers of goods and services to the City pay a living wage to their employees, currently in the $24-an-hour range? Absolutely not. We thought it was an abomination.

Which is to say, when you have a City Council where the average annual Councillor salary tops well over $100,000, it’s not just bad optics but borders on the inhumane, when you —  as a majority ABC Vancouver Council — set about to cut the wages of working people struggllng to get by in Canada’s most expensive city.

VanRamblings realizes that the 36.3% of the Vancouver electorate who bothered to turn out at the polls in October 2022 to elect a new Vancouver City Council, did not cast their ballot the way they did to please VanRamblings as their priority for a new Council. ABC Vancouver won fair and square (unlike Donald Trump, we’re not given to saying things are ‘rigged’ when events don’t unfold as we might wish).

Dan Fumano, Postmedia: ABC Vancouver returns $116,000 in prohibited donations from 2022 election

VanRamblings will continue to be critical of our city’s majority ABC Vancouver City Council, involving their collective decision to attempt to eliminate a cherished 133-year-old environmental institution, the Vancouver Park Board. At no point, though, will we publish rhetoric that dehumanizes our ABC Vancouver elected officials.

#SaveOurParkBoard | The Genesis of the ‘Movement’ to Abolish Park Board

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Vision Vancouver celebrates their overwhelming victory at the polls on November 19, 2011

Developers have long run the City of Vancouver, with various of the elected City Councils over the years acting as their all-too-willing handmaidens.


Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver founder, standing outside, near his home in Railtown

The godfather and founder of the Vision Vancouver municipal party in 2004 was financier / philanthropist / real estate developer, and heir to a capitalist fortune, Tennessee émigré Joel Solomon, a political organizer who cut his teeth working on Jimmy Carter’s successful U.S. presidential campaign in the mid-1970s.

In the early 1990s, Solomon found his way to British Columbia, as he sought refuge on Cortes Island, while recovering from a serious health issue. In 1993, Solomon  met a young organic farmer named Gregor Robertson. Their views aligned, especially on the urgent need to address climate change. The two became fast friends.

In 2002 Solomon made a decision to form a Vancouver civic party, which in time came to be called Vision Vancouver.

Recruiting Mike Magee from Stratcom —  a strategic communications company dedicated to progressive causes — working with Magee, Solomon promised the then Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) Councillors Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson and Jim Green their political futures lay with his newly-formed Vision Vancouver civic party, committing to them that he would dedicate substantial financial resources to their re-election in 2005’s Vancouver municipal election.

Long story short — following the untimely death of Jim Green, who was Vision Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate in the 2005 civic election — in 2006, Joel Solomon recruited his friend Gregor Robertson to seek the nomination to become the Mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver in our city’s 2008 municipal election.

The rest is history: Vision Vancouver became government, from 2008 through 2018.


Gregor Robertson, Mayor in the City of Vancouver, from November 15, 2008 through October 20, 2018

Upon assuming government at Vancouver City Hall in 2008, Joel Solomon was quick to establish a secretive, behind-the-scenes “Mayoral advisory Board” — most members of which were not only longtime friends of Solomon’s dating back to his days in Tennessee, but were, as well, extremely successful real estate developers.


During their time in government, 12 development-related lawsuits were filed against Vision Vancouver

Over the course of their years in power, there were a number of development-related lawsuits that were filed against Vision Vancouver.

Perhaps the most egregious — and many thought, corrupt — development-related failing by Vision Vancouver involved a legal petition filed with the BC Supreme Court on May 6, 2014, by the Community Association of New Yaletown, to prevent a mega-tower development on the city block containing Emery Barnes Park.

The legal petition alleged the City, in approving development of the 36-storey tower at 508 Helmcken St. and a related building across the street at 1099 Richards Street violated the Downtown Official Development Plan (DODP) bylaws in in numerous and significant ways, while thwarting the long-planned expansion of Emery Barnes Park “to help reduce the City’s significant shortfall in meeting its own green space targets in the area.”


Emery Barnes Park, in the heart of New Yaletown, adjacent to Davie and Seymour streets

That Vision Vancouver had not consulted with the community, nor even made any mention of their plans to build yet another mega-tower in the New Yaletown neighbourhood — a “favour” to the Tennessee-based developer, Brenhill Development, who just happened to be friends with Joel Solomon, and members of the Mayoral Advisory Board — exacerbated not only the ire of residents of New Yaletown, but esteemed British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan, who ruled in favour of the New Yaletown residents, “killing the New Yaletown development”, even though it was already under construction.

Read the Vancouver Sun article on Brenhill Development’s “sweet deal” here.

Some months later, the City of Vancouver prevailed at the B.C. Court of Appeals.


Peter Armstrong, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer, and founder / financier of ABC Vancouver

Now Peter Armstrong — who we know and very much like, who has pulled our behind out of the fire on more than one occasion, and who refers to us as his “favourite socialist” — will not be happy that we’re writing about him (reasonably, we can expect an irate call from Peter at some point today, as in “Why didn’t you call me to confirm with me what you’re writing about today?”).

But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do (also, we hate to risk being lied to).


Founder Peter Armstrong’s Rocky Mountaineer offers unsurpassed luxury travel to discerning travelers

Now, Peter Armstrong — a pulled himself up by his bootstraps east end kid made good (we share a history as ‘east end kids’) — for many years was president of Vancouver’s oldest and most successful civic party, the Non-Partisan Association.

That is, until some dastardly folks staged a coup, taking over Peter’s beloved Non-Partisan Association in his absence, as he sailed his yacht to visit his good friend, Lululemon founder Chip Wilson, at his luxurious, well-appointed villa in Italy.

The consequence of the coup? Four of five NPA electeds resigned from the party.

And what became of the now former Non-Partisan Association Board members, who succeeded in killing the NPA, which party secured only, a paltry, unimaginably small 2.3% of the vote, when voters went to the polls in October 2022?


“Raymond, do you really think I’ll win re-election in Point Grey when we go to the polls in October?”

Premier David Eby will be heartened to know that these same far-right-of-centre nimrods are currently running the show with the nascent B.C. Conservative Party.

VanRamblings readers won’t be surprised to learn that ABC Vancouver founder, financier and Ken Sim backer, Peter Armstrong — as was the case with Joel Solomon, Vision Vancouver, and Mayor Gregor Robertson — has also created a secretive, behind-the-scenes Mayoral Advisory Committee, said committee comprised of developers, but mostly Peter and his very good friend, Chip Wilson.

A narrative, related to us recently by a very reliable VanRamblings source …

“Ken Sim ‘disappeared’ for a week this past autumn.

No one, save his family, knew where he was. In fact, Ken Sim was on board Peter Armstrong’s yacht, sailing up the west coast of British Columbia.

When Sim arrived back in town, returning to the Mayor’s office, he consulted with his Chief of Staff, Trevor Ford, after which the Mayor called in the ABC Park Board electeds to inform them of his decision to abolish the independent, elected Vancouver Park Board, leaving his now former ABC Park Board Commissioners in the room with Mr. Ford and David Grewal to explain details, and what would happen going forward.

Soon after, now former ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen made the decision to sit on Park Board as independents.

Subsequently, Sim called a press conference to announce his intention to eliminate the 133-year-old elected body, the much cherished, independent, and beloved Vancouver Park Board.”

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Whether it’s developer Mayor Tom Campbell in the late 60s, or Joel Solomon and Gregor Robertson for a 10-year period when Vision Vancouver was at the seat of power at Vancouver City Hall, or in these latter days, with an avuncular — but dare we say, avaricious — Peter Armstrong and Chip Wilson, we who call Vancouver home are reminded yet again, and much to our consternation, this is not our city, for Vancouver is owned lock, stock and barrel by the developer class.

#SaveOurParkBoard | Ken Sim / ABC Vancouver Lies

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The quite barking mad Dr. Penny Janet Drury Ballem, Vancouver City Manager, 2008 – 2015

In 2014, Dr. Penny Ballem, the power mad, often disagreeable and fiscally irresponsible City Manager — moving her office from City Hall’s 3rd floor, in favour of a multi-million dollar renovation of the “closed” 5th & 6th floors at The Hall, giving her mightily expanded staff a new home — Dr. Ballem, hired by the Vision Vancouver administration in 2008 to impose their political and administrative agenda, found herself “fed up” with the operation of the Vancouver Park Board, had enough with what she termed their “tomfoolery”, their inefficiency and “spendthrift ways”.

All this after Vision Vancouver slashed $30 million from the Park Board budget.

Dr. Ballem’s choleric rage about Park Board occurred even in spite of the fact that, in 2010, she had installed Malcolm Bromley as her Park Board General Manager, in unprecedented fashion making Bromley a “city employee”, with direct reporting responsibility to the Office of the City Manager. Read, to her: Dr. Penny Ballem.

Less than a year into her tenure, it was not enough that Dr. Ballem “retired” well-respected, longtime Park Board General Manager Susan Mundick, Dr. Ballem also “relieved” the employment of several other invaluable, longtime, senior city staff.

Dr. Ballem, however, wanted more, much more.

Dr. Ballem wanted  complete and utter control of the Vancouver Park Board.

In late 2014, Dr. Ballem had the Park Board led by Chairperson Aaron Jasper move a motion at the Park Board table that would turn over operational responsibility for Park Board to the City, as a “necessary cost-saving measure and rationalization” of the operation of Park Board. From that day forward the City would be responsible for all Park Board facility maintenance, garbage collection and recycling.

“When I was first elected as a Park Board Commissioner in 2011,” John Coupar recently told VanRamblings, “if there was a maintenance issue that needed tending to, through the Chair I could have her or him raise the issue that needed remedy, which “repair” was always responded to quickly and efficiently.


John Coupar, former Vancouver Park Board Chairperson, and Park Board Commissioner

When I became Chairperson in late 2014, I was disappointed to learn that when requests for maintenance made through Board General Manager Malcolm Bromley were forwarded to the City, the City maintenance department often took weeks or months to remediate an issue, if that concern was ever remediated at all.”


Mayor Ken Sim announces pending elimination of an elected Vancouver Park Board (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Since it was created in 1889, the Vancouver Park Board has been a source of discussion and division. But the decision by Mayor Ken Sim to try and abolish the 133-year-old elected body could make its final chapter its most dramatic.

“We are going to take the long overdue step that will ensure our parks and recreation facilities will serve our communities to their fullest potential, in the process saving taxpayers millions of dollars in Park Board operation costs” Sim told those gathered for a press conference Wednesday morning, December 6, 2023.

“I’m a lean-certified black belt, I understand workflow,” said Sim in response to a question about how much the city would save in costs, in a reference that left the media who’d gathered for the announcement flummoxed.

Mayor Ken Sim has yet to explain where the “millions of dollars in savings” by eliminating an elected Park Board will be derived.

In point of fact, top-voted ABC Vancouver City Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung — a former Park Board Chairperson — could easily have informed the Mayor that his statement was so much codswallop, that the City had long ago assumed fiscal responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the Vancouver Park Board.

“Bad enough that the Mayor misled the public when, at his announcement proposing to abolish the elected Park Board, he stated that there would be millions in savings to be had. Clearly, an untruth,” former Vancouver City Councillor and Park Board Commissioner Michael Wiebe recently told VanRamblings.


Michael Wiebe, former Vancouver City Councillor, and Vancouver Park Board Commissioner

“When I met with Mayor-elect Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver founder Peter Armstrong in the Mayor’s office soon after the 2022 election, I was assured by both of their full and unadulterated support for an independent Park Board. Clearly, the commitment they made to me the day we met, and to a public who voted for them, was a lie.”


Ken Sim. “So yeah, whaddya want to make of it, eh? Don’t like what I’m doin’? Too effin bad.“

On the day Mayor Ken Sim made the announcement that it was his intention to eliminate an elected Park Board in the City of Vancouver, he was clear that amid concerns being voiced that getting rid of the Vancouver Park Board could mean a loss of prized park land in the city, on his watch that was not going to happen.

“I want to be very clear: as long as I’m mayor, parks will always be parks in the City of Vancouver,” Mayor Sim told CityNews in an interview on Friday, December 15, 2023.

Of course, Mayor Sim made no mention that of Vancouver’s 242 parks, only 142 are designated as parks, leaving the remaining “green space” open for development.

Under the current system, a two-thirds majority vote on Council and Park Board is required to remove any parks from the city’s inventory.

Sim told CityNews that he’s going to bring in new protections for green spaces.

“We’re going to change it so it has to be unanimous in the chamber, so all 10 Councillors and mayor of the day have to be in favour, plus it would go to referendum,” Sim said.

All of which begs several questions.

Given that ABC Vancouver candidate for office Ken Sim misled the voting public on a commitment he made during the 2022 Vancouver municipal election that …

  • A Ken Sim-led civic administration would strengthen and support an independent, elected Park Board;
  • Given that a newly-elected Mayor Sim employed as partial rationale for the 10.7% property tax increase he announced in December 2022, in stating that “we felt we had to restore funding to and support our Vancouver Park Board;”
  • Given that Mayor Sim misled the public when he stated that there were “millions to be saved” in eliminating an independent, elected Park Board, when such is clearly not the case; and …
  • Given that Ken Sim boldfacedly misled former Vancouver Park Board Commissioner and City Councillor Michael Wiebe —  not to mention current Park Board Commissioners Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky and Laura Christensen when they ran under the ABC Vancouver banner as Park Board candidates —  when he stated to Mr. Wiebe and his own party’s candidates for Park Board his unvarnished and ongoing support for an independent, elected Vancouver Park Board …

Can Mayor Ken Sim be believed when he makes the pronouncement that park land will not be sold off on his watch?

And, further, that any talk of development of green spaces should such come to pass would require the unanimous consent of all 10 Vancouver City Councillors?

 

#SaveOurParkBoard | 80s Redux | Greed is Good

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Environment, Food & Health, News, Park Board, Politics, Save Kits Beach, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2022, , , , , , ,

Tom Campbell, Mayor of Vancouver, 1966 - 1972
Tom ‘Not So Terrific’ Campbell, controversial Vancouver mayor, in office from 1966 to 1972

In 1966, running as an independent, a brash Tom Campbell defeated sitting Non-Partisan Association Mayor Bill Rathie to become Vancouver’s 31st mayor.

From the outset, Campbell’s ascension to the Mayor’s office heralded a pro-development ethos that would make even our current ABC Vancouver-dominated City Council blush, with Campbell — and his now ‘on board’  NPA colleagues — advocating for a freeway that would cut through a swath of the Downtown Eastside, require the demolition of the historic Carnegie Centre at Main and Hastings, and bring about the construction of a luxury hotel at the entrance to Stanley Park.

Vancouver's West End, 1960s, pre high-rise development
Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood, 1960, pre-high-rise construction. Photo, Fred Herzog.

In the West End, where Campbell owned substantial property — a wealthy, successful developer, Campbell was reputed to own one-third of the land located between (south to north) Davie and Georgia streets, and east to west, Denman Street and Stanley Park — 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 set about to make way for the rapid construction of more than 200 concrete high-rise towers.

In six short years, Mayor Tom Campbell and the Non-Partisan Association transformed a single family dwelling West End neighbourhood, irrevocably and forever.

That all of these “changes” augered controversy among large portions of the populace was a given, leading to regular, vocal and sometimes even violent protests throughout Campbell’s treacherous tenure as Mayor, finally lead to his overwhelming defeat at the polls in the November 1972 Vancouver “change” civic election.


Oct. 22, 2022 | Newly-formed civic party, ABC Vancouver, wins an overwhelming victory at the polls

Why raise ancient history now?

Not since the late 1960s / early 70s have Vancouver voters — seemingly, unknowingly — elected a more greed-inspired (this, on behalf of their financial backers), and wildly pro-development slate of lock step Vancouver City Councillors to office, at the heart of our city’s seat of municipal government at 12th and Cambie.

In early 2024, Vancouver sits on the wary edge of massive tower development, as promulgated by the “super majority” ABC Vancouver civic administration installed by Vancouverites at City Hall only 15 short months ago today. If Tom Campbell’s greed was able to destroy a single family-oriented West End neighbourhood 50+ years ago over six short years in power, imagine what the current ABC Vancouver-led municipal government can achieve over the course of the next 32 months?


Vancouver Park Board Commissioner at Vancouver City Hall, holding her new, month old baby

Click on this link to hear (former, and now independent) ABC Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Laura Christensen address the whole of Vancouver City Council on December 13, 2023 —  including her ABC Council running mates —  on the initiative of the political party she ran with to eliminate the elected Vancouver Park Board.

In her address to Council, Ms. Christensen pointed out to her now former ABC Vancouver City Council colleagues that there are 242 parks in the City of Vancouver, only 142 of which are designated as parks — leaving these latter non-designated “parks” open for development, including such beloved parks as Burrard Inlet’s Sunset Beach, Locarno Park, and Spanish Banks East and West.


Fans enjoy the Vancouver Canadians at Nat Bailey Stadium. Could the city-owned stadium be put up for sale? A report suggests sport & cultural venues should be shed by the city. Photo: Jason Payne /PNG

In an article published in the Vancouver Sun on Saturday, the Sun’s civic affairs reporter Dan Fumano writes that a …

“… budget task force assembled last year by ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim delivered its report with 17 recommendations on how the city could improve its financial health while reducing pressure to increase on property taxes.

One recommendation suggests the city look at divesting some of its “non-core assets.”

When Fumano asked ABC Vancouver Councillor Brian Montague, one of two ABC Councillors who served on the task force’s advisory panel, if the “non-core assets” in the report would include include community centres, libraries, civic theatres, and sports facilities, Montague replied …

“I think it’s something we need to talk about, because there might be assets where divestment is the best approach.”

Former Vancouver Park Board Chairperson John Coupar clarified the matter on X:

Former Vancouver City Councillor Colleen Hardwick, and 2022 TEAM Mayoral candidate writes …

So, that’s it.

The reason for dismantling an elected Park Board?

A cynical and egregious land grab, a decision demanded by ABC Vancouver’s avaricious financial backers, who fancy adding billions of dollars more to their already ungainly wealth, all at the cost of: environmental devastation and climate change unchecked, a degraded quality of life in Vancouver for decades to come, reduced access to our public beaches — or, in some cases, no access at all to what were once but would no longer be “public beaches”— and long dark corridors of black towers lining the arterials and Vancouver’s beach fronts, all across the city.

Click / tap on the graphic above to sign  the Save Our Park Board Petition started by Sarah Blyth