On Monday evening, Glacier Media (Vancouver Courier, Business in Vancouver, Vancouver is Awesome) hosted the first raucous, informative and — as it turned out — defining Mayoral debate in this, the consequential and critically important to our future 2018 Vancouver civic election.
All of the Mayoral candidates on the stage acquitted themselves well …
-
The NPA’s Ken Sim extolled his virtues as a hometown boy, committed to families, someone who will listen and consult with voters when he is elected, who would work to develop the best plan for addressing Vancouver’s affordable housing dilemma, and the businessperson — responsible for 5000 staff in his Nurse Next Door business, he said, although audience members were querulous about this claim, shouting “It’s a franchise business, you’re not directly responsible for 5000 employees, nor do you supervise or manage them” — who would be best able to put the city back on firm financial ground. Audience members were none-too-pleased with his far off promise of building new affordable housing, some day, years down the road, after much consultation;
- Kennedy Stewart, recently retired NDP Member of Parliament, the candidate backed by labour, talked about Kinder Morgan, talked about a plan to build more rental housing (nothing about building co-housing and new co-op housing, though), articulate, polished and bland, who seems not to have quite cottoned onto the notion that Vancouver, for the past seven years, has found itself in the midst of a housing crisis;
- Yes Vancouver’s Hector Bremner, looking as chipper and dapper as always, who all but got booed off the stage for the third party billboard ads that have gone up all over town, extolling him as “the” candidate to build affordable housing for the poor and downtrodden among us, which is all of us, one supposes — although no one in the audience was buying it;
- Vancouver First’s Fred Harding, the “there’s a new sheriff in town candidate” of law and order, who seems intent on gentrifying the Downtown Eastside, and “getting rid of those damn bike lanes”;
- Pro Vancouver’s Mayoral candidate David Chen, whose message seemed confused. At least this reporter couldn’t make hide nor hair of what he was going on about, his plea, “Vote for me because …”.
And then there were the distaff Vancouver Mayoral candidates …
-
Wai Young, the Coalition Party’s Mayoral candidate who railed against bike lanes, particularly along West 10th Avenue alongside the Vancouver General Hospital, but who proved herself to be quite the campaigner, articulate, bold, and someone who demands to be taken seriously, as should be the case, as she comes off well as a candidate of substance and stature, a woman who means business, whose perspective on change tends to the very conservative, but who is still very much a concerned citizen, as well as a lifelong resident of our city.
And then there was Shauna Marie Sylvester … wow, wow, wow !!!
Shauna Sylvester, the ‘come from behind’ must vote candidate for Vancouver’s next Mayor, the surefire new Mayor, for whom you’ll be casting your ballot next month
Articulate, bright, by far the best speaker of the evening, the only person running a campaign for office built on sound policies, the only candidate with a plan to make ours a more livable city, the only candidate who would work to ensure that the mess down south doesn’t invade our shores, a Mayoral candidate of compassion and wit, the only person on the stage on Monday evening who you could imagine sitting around a table with other big city Mayor’s across Canada and quietly imposing her will on her mayoral brethren, and the only mayoral candidate articulating a plan for all of us, for …
1. Affordable co-and-co-op housing built on city-owned & Crown land on a leasehold basis, the made-in-Canada solution to affordable housing that you would think NDPer Kennedy Stewart would be espousing — given that co-operative housing is the brainchild of former federal NDP leader David Lewis, who led the party in the 1970s, but who acts now as if he’s never heard of something called co-op housing — leaving Shauna Sylvester as the only candidate running in the current election who is committed to building thousands of units of co-operative housing on city-owned and Crown land, to giving direction to Vancouver’s Community Land Trust to build 3500 units of co-operative housing each and every year for the next 10 years, funded by the federal and provincial governments, and as a part of the Community Amenity Contributions required of developers;
2. The reasons for voting Shauna Sylvester as the next and sure-to-be-beloved, respected and admired Mayor of Vancouver are myriad …
Ms. Sylvester is a staunch advocate for & supporter of the arts. In a Shauna Sylvester administration, the arts would thrive: monies would be found to build the new art gallery, live theatre in Vancouver would thrive as it hasn’t for a generation, the public art programme would be maintained and perhaps even grown, film festivals would receive bountiful support out of the Mayor’s office — with Shauna Sylvester the tag ‘No Fun City’ would become a forgotten slight, and one without any meaning;
Transit is top of mind for Shauna Sylvester, which for us means more frequent bus service and later bus service and Skytrain service on the weekends as both a feminist and a safety issue, ensuring that the new rapid transit line down the Broadway corridor would extend all way to UBC, and lobbying for free transit for children under the age of 18 (the latter, as it happens, about to be realized next month when our socially just provincial NDP government announces their poverty reduction strategy — see, Shauna’s already achieved something for us);
Shauna Sylvester is the only Mayoral candidate to release a detailed climate action plan, in which she has called for accelerating the city’s transition to 100 percent renewable energy. “There will be unavoidable consequences from damage done by existing climate change. We need to ensure that our city is resilient enough to sustain these effects and our residents are able to maintain a healthy standard of living.”
Adoption of electric vehicles by expanding community charging infrastructure, and parking benefits for those who drive electric vehicles, and support for electric and hybrid vehicles in Vancouver’s burgeoning car share programmes.
Shifting to passive and green buildings and introducing incentives to encourage green retrofits. Reducing flood risk, including a call for more parks in high-density areas, while advocating for increased permeability in all new developments to reduce the surface run-off of water.
And those damnable bike lanes all of the other Mayoral candidates are (irresponsibly) railing against: not Shauna Sylvester, because unlike so many other of the candidates running to become our next Mayor, as my mother used to say, “She’s got a brain in her head,” which for us means a continued, responsible and neighbourhood-consulted expansion of safe bike corridors for those among us who give a good galldarn about our health, and the health of our community.
Wondering where we’re going with today’s overlong column? As VanRamblings is wont to say, the answer is easy, peasy, nice and easy.
VanRamblings is formally endorsing Shauna Sylvester as Vancouver’s next Mayor, the only responsible choice among the 21 candidates seeking to take over the Mayor’s office at Vancouver City Hall, a long overdue woman Mayor for our city, a conciliator, someone who knows how to work with others and get things done, someone who’s prepared to use the velvet glove when she deems it necessary, an intellect of the first order, one of the most centred, self-assured yet humble and accomplished Mayoral candidates who has ever offered themselves for civic office in Vancouver.
What’s that, you say? Shauna Sylvester is gonna split the left vote, Kennedy Stewart has the backing of labour and both OneCity Vancouver and Vision Vancouver are about to endorse Kennedy Stewart for Mayor — ”Kennedy Stewart is just destined to become Vancouver’s next Mayor.”
Shauna Sylvester is the only truly independent Mayoral candidate running in the current Vancouver civic election, an educated woman of mad skills, a woman of substance, ideas, accomplishment & élan, not just “the gal with a plan” but the only Mayoral candidate in this civic election with a truly achievable plan. Just you wait, the Coalition of Progressive Electors will endorse Shauna Sylvester. So will David Suzuki. Independent candidates Rob McDowell, Erin Shum and Sarah Blyth will endorse Shauna Sylvester.
Time to get onboard the Shauna Sylvester train, as Vancouver’s inevitable next Mayor, the single most transformative candidate for Mayor, perhaps in our city’s history, but certainly in the Vancouver 2018 municipal election.
Mark my words: Shauna-mania is about to sweep through the electorate in the City of Vancouver, and drive voters to the polls in droves next month.
Imagine. A woman as Vancouver’s next Mayor, supported by & working with a City Council comprised of OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, COPE’s Jean Swanson & Anne Roberts, the Greens’ Adriane Carr, Vision’s Heather Deal & Catherine Evans, the NPA’s Sarah Kirby-Yung & Melissa De Genova, and first-rate independents Sarah Blyth and Erin Shum. It’s easy if you try.
