Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith has written about Non-Partisan Association mayoralty candidate Kirk LaPointe — former Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun, CBC Ombudsman, and current publisher-editor of Self-Counsel Press — on a couple of occasions, once six weeks prior to his Monday, July 14th candidacy announcement, the other this past weekend.
Throughout the 2014 electoral campaign, Mr. LaPointe will post to The Vancouver I Want, his 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign blog.
Earlier today, in light of the fact that Charlie Smith makes reference to The Vancouver I Want blog post in his weekend piece, VanRamblings requested permission to re-post Mr. LaPointe’s blog post, supplemented by a re-posting of a few of Mr. LaPointe’s Twitter offerings — which, it should be pointed out, on both counts, Mr. LaPointe wrote himself, sans intervention from the NPA’s Communications team (not that the team isn’t helfpul or competent, but rather that Mr. LaPointe is his own man, and when words appear in print under his name, they’ll be words he has actually written).
Kirk LaPointe, in The Vancouver I Want: Latest Learnings
On the 2nd week of my candidacy, what I am learning and reflecting upon:
1. I may wait for the proverbial cows to come home for my opponents to agree to sign a code of conduct to avoid personal attacks in the campaign.
2. I may wait for the proverbial cold day in Hades for my opponents to open the city’s budget books and permit us a line-by-line examination of how, where and what government spends. Until we get the how, where and what, we have every right to suspect why.
3. Our homelessness issue is not going to be solved on our own in the city. We need a new national conversation on health, justice, income and education, and Vancouver has to lead the discussion. This government makes a mistake by promising to end homelessness (or, as it has reframed the matter in a more modest objective, street homelessness) when it knows it’s an elusive goal on its own.
4. Until we understand how the Port of Vancouver might run Granville Island, Gregor Robertson and the Vision council members should not be pulling out the chequebook to offer to buy it. And if they are serious about it, they have an obligation to consult the community on what they would do and how it would be better than the Port plan. Granville Island became the great neighbourhood under federal watch, not under the city. Ideology should not trump the benefit of the doubt.
5. Until we understand what Gregor Robertson and the Vision council members want to do with the Arbutus corridor, they should not be pulling out the chequebook to buy it from Canadian Pacific Railways. If the asking price is $100 million (which is what it was several years ago), how can that expenditure be justified except through eventual development? And if that’s in the cards, Gregor Robertson and the Vision council members should level with the neighbourhood.
6. Until we understand how Gregor Robertson and the Vision council members intend to finance a subway to UBC, they should not be claiming it is a “new” offering in its literature and commercials. Perhaps “speculative” or “notional” would be the better term to apply to the line. Financial dance partners are required (Ottawa, Victoria, UBC) but the mayor is on the floor alone on this one. It will take billions of dollars from something other than the city, and many years, so “new” is a fib that should be fixed.
7. When did we stop trusting public servants? Bad enough that Gregor Robertson and the Vision council members permit our city executives to forbid public servants to talk directly to the media. But why would we heed the Robertson/Vision call for an independent investigation into two SkyTrain stoppages? TransLink has explained what happened. If there is a reason to distrust this explanation, we should hear it now. If there is a deficient contingency plan, then let’s just fix that. But there would be many more matters deserving of an independent investigation ahead of this.
8. While I might not always agree with Trish Kelly on policy, what happened to her was distressing. She contends she was dumped from the Vision Vancouver ticket on park board and that she didn’t step aside (as Vision Vancouver claimed). Her eight-years-ago performance art video might discomfort a few people, but I had hoped we were well past gendered responses and could also understand how social media shares ideas. Her nomination support indicated immense potential in public life and I hope she finds her way there soon. Her expulsion is an odd move for a party that professes modernity, tolerance and inclusiveness.
