Vancouver Votes 2018 | Non-Partisan Association

BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018

2018 Vancouver Non-Partisan Association candidates for City Council and Park BoardThe happy, smiling 2018 NPA crew seeking office for Mayor, Council and Park Board

Two months ago, VanRamblings would have told you that the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association was all but a lock to become the majority party at Vancouver City Hall come the evening of October 20th. Not anymore.
When the NPA announced its candidate slate on July 31st, initially we were impressed: six of nine of their candidates for Council are women! When three of the four Green Party candidates for Council are men, and with most of the other parties (save COPE) offering mostly men for office, the surfeit of accomplished women running for Council with the NPA reinforces the notion that the 2018 Non-Partisan Association is not your ma and pa’s NPA, but a decidedly more progressive centre-right civic governance party.
The more women in civic government, the happier VanRamblings will be.
But, alas, VanRamblings believes that all is not well on the NPA front when it comes to electing a surfeit of candidates to City Council this autumn (no reflection on the candidates, most of whom we know, like, respect and admire), so as to gain their much sought after majority at City Hall. Even though it’s still too early to predict, we continue to believe Ken Sim to be the odds on favourite to secure the Mayor’s chair come October 20th.
Where, then, has the NPA “gone wrong”, and how have they managed to hurt their chances to secure their much cherished majority on Vancouver City Council? Read on and we’ll tell you …

  • Outsized slate. With left-of-centre parties running shortened slates, with OneCity Vancouver offering two candidates for Council, the Greens 4, and COPE 3, how in tarnation did the NPA think that running a near full Council slate would do them at all well when it comes to the vote this upcoming October? Vancouver voters are not slate voters — you’d think the NPA, which ran shortened slates in 2011 and 2014, would know better than to run a near full slate, and risk splitting the vote among their ‘far too many’ Council candidates. Apparently not. Alas.

    We’ve heard from various sources within the NPA that it was NPA apparatchik Peter Armstrong and mayoralty candidate Ken Sim who wanted to run a full slate. Peter, sophisticated politico that he is oughta know better, and Ken Sim — well, maybe, he’s just a tad over-confident.

    Whatever the case, with some 50 candidates for Council running with nine different Vancouver civic parties (if you include Jamie Lee Hamilton’s IDEA party), and at least a few independents whose candidacies for Council could succeed (think Rob McDowell and Sarah Blyth), running nine candidates for Council is akin to the NPA shooting itself in the foot even before the election has properly gotten underway.

  • Division and dislike. Three of the NPA’s female Council candidates have a visceral dislike, bordering on hatred, for one another (and, no, we’re not going to say who those three are), which oughta make for fun times on the hustings and at all-candidates meetings in September and October, and not so much fun in the NPA caucus over the next 9 weeks.

  • Rob McDowell. In the 2014 Vancouver civic election, the NPA’s Rob McDowell secured 53965 hard-fought-for and well-deserved votes, has long sat as a member of the NPA Board, came up with the new purple colour scheme and the New Progressive Association nomenclature for the party. Rob — an incredibly bright man of much accomplishment, and someone we have long admired — is one of the most respected politicos in town, and is much loved, respected and admired within the party. And yet, and yet, Rob did not secure an NPA nomination for Vancouver City Council! How can that be? For VanRamblings, not putting Rob McDowell on the ballot beggars belief — and we are far from alone in believing that both within and outside of the Non-Partisan Association. Rob is now running as an independent — not out of a sense of pique, but because of his broad support in the community across the political spectrum.

Too many Council candidates, candidates “not on the same page” politically or policy-wise, and without Rob McDowell in the mix, the NPA would seem to be hewing to an overcrowded (far) right politically in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. All of which smacks of a hubris that won’t serve them well.
Still and all, VanRamblings has every intention of endorsing Sarah Kirby-Yung for Council (and writing recommendable things of at least two more), will support John Coupar and Casey Crawford for Park Board (and probably more NPA Park Board candidates), and will most assuredly endorse our friend Christopher Richardson for Vancouver School Board.
We know each of these very fine people mentioned above well, believe them to be great and good public servants of the first order, and believe, as well, that the electorate will be well-served by casting a vote for each.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | VanRamblings’ Election Coverage Resumes

BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018

2018 Vancouver Civic Election, My City My Vote. October 20 2018.

Two months from today, British Columbians will go to the polls to elect civic governments in their municipalities to four year terms of office.
As is always the case in a democracy, voting is crucial to our future — look what happened down south when not enough Democrats and independents got out to the polls in 2016 to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton.
Commencing on Tuesday, August 21st, VanRamblings will take a look at where we are election-wise in Vancouver nine weeks out from election day, Saturday, October 20th, each day taking an in-depth, non-partisan look at each of the civic parties offering candidates for office.
On the right, there’s the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, Wai Young’s Coalition Party, YES Vancouver and Vancouver First, and on the left, you’ll find a renewed Coalition of Progressive Electors, OneCity Vancouver (star candidate, Christine Boyle), Vision Vancouver, and Pro Vancouver.
All but one of the civic parties running candidates in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election have announced their candidates for City Council, Park Board and School Board, including eight serious-minded, well-funded charismatic candidates who have announced for Mayor, each of whom will be seeking your vote when the advance polls open on Wednesday, October 10th, through until 8pm ten days later when the polls close.

Vancouver Votes 2018 | Patrick Condon | The Man With a Plan

BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018

UBC’s Patrick Condon — The Unlikely Revolutionary

Patrick Condon, Vancouver's revolutionary 2018 candidate for MayorPatrick Condon, the tousle-haired 2018 revolutionary candidate for Mayor of Vancouver

In today’s VanRamblings post, we set about to introduce you to University of British Columbia professor in Urban Design and Landscape Architecture — okay, okay, let’s call him what he is: a City Planner, and a damn fine city planner at that, and a professor at UBC who has taught more than 80% of city planners currently employed across the Metro Vancouver region and who has played a key behind the scenes role in developing whatever livable aspects of life on the Lower Mainland that exists across our region today.
In today’s VanRamblings we refer to Mr. Condon — we’re going to call him “Patrick” from here on in, because that’s the way he’d want it, and that’s the way you should see him, as a friend, as a neighbour, and as one of us struggling to make ours a more livable city for all — as the Man With a Plan, and in the body of today’s post, as The Unlikely Revolutionary.
Why?
The answer is a simple one: never before in our city’s 132-year history have we had an accomplished city builder with a lifetime of experience in designing livable cities for all offer himself up as a candidate for Vancouver Mayor — that, at least in part, addresses the Man With a Plan headline.
Mr. Condon well elucidates his affordable housing and livable city plan in some great detail in the interview available at the top of today’s column.
You’ll want to listen closely to today’s interview with the affable, gregarious, and utterly charming and respectful of you and me, Mr. Condon — and if you don’t come away saying to yourself, “Patrick Condon is the guy I want to see as Vancouver’s next Mayor,” VanRamblings will be very surprised.

2018 Vancouver Mayoral aspirants Shauna Sylvester, Ian Campbell & Kennedy Stewart2018 Vancouver Mayoral aspirants Shauna Sylvester, Ian Campbell & Kennedy Stewart

All of which is to say that, as well, we continue to harbour immense respect for independent Mayoral candidate, Shauna Sylvester — Vancouver is long overdue for a woman Mayor — and that we kinda think the sun sorta rises & sets on Squamish Nation hereditary Chief Ian Campbell, one of the ‘great men’ we have met in our lifetime, accomplished and incredibly bright, and a man of integrity, wit and compassion — and a humble man of substance who means much good for our city; or, Kennedy Stewart — who’s worked as a federal NDP Member of Parliament for Burnaby-Douglas / Burnaby South since 2011, a Wolfville, Nova Scotia Maritime boy born and bred (Canadians don’t come any finer than those folks who’ve lived in the Maritimes), and an accomplished Parliamentarian with a democratic history of governance — and, the only candidate in the progressive coalition race with a successful electoral history, and first-hand experience in governance.
Patrick Condon’s entry into the Vancouver Mayoral race, though, has set the bar high for all the other 2018 Mayoral aspirants — there’s no bafflegab and no spin in the Patrick Condon zone, and when you’re a Mayoral candidate of vision and accomplished city building competence, how can you not have set the standard for what the electorate might expect in their next Mayor?

Patrick Condon, Vancouver's revolutionary 2018 candidate for Mayor

Still, we have referred to Patrick Condon as the unlikely revolutionary, and as such, we oughta explain ourselves — although Patrick does a pretty fine job of doing that all on his own, as you’ll hear in the interview above.
As Patrick told Straight editor Charlie Smith in a June 10th interview …

“With the support of the federal and provincial governments, the city should build sufficient public housing on land made permanently public like they do in many European countries,” he declared. “Vienna is a model for what Vancouver could do. If we fail, this city will soon become nothing more than a parking place for cash and a pretty place to visit.”

So, what makes Patrick Condon’s Mayoral candidacy revolutionary?

1. A movement to 50% non-market housing: Patrick Condon says his goal is to increase the percentage of non-market housing in Vancouver, from 15% to 50% — as you’ll hear in the interview, a mix of co-op, co-housing and rental, with a social housing component for those requiring supports. Patrick explains how he’d go about that: building on city land — as he avers, there is currently $2.7 billion in Vancouver’s much-lauded Property Endowment Fund, and both the federal and provincial governments own hundreds of acres of Crown land in our city — Patrick Condon proposes to build non-market housing on those lands, on a leasehold basis, similar to what we see along south False Creek, as he explains today, in VanRamblings’ interview with the good Mr. Condon;

2. Neighbourhood consultation. With Patrick Condon as Mayor, you’d see him in your neighbourhood often, consulting with and listening to you, working together to build the city we need;

3. Negotiation of a fair collective agreement with City workers. And a collective agreement that would continue to set the standard for municipal collective agreements across British Columbia. A Patrick Condon candidacy would not come at the expense of city workers, nor any other worker employed by the city of Vancouver;

4. A radical re-think of Vancouver’s property tax system. A Patrick Condon Mayoralty, following an application to the province to make the required changes to the Vancouver Charter, would see a shift away from the current property tax system, such that first-time owners would pay much less, while properties assessed at $5 million or more would pay more, as would the multi-national corporate head offices located in Vancouver, with cuts to the small business tax — similar to the plan retired Vancouver City Councillor Tim Louis put in place when he was Finance Chair on Vancouver City Council, from 2002 – 2005.

There’s a great deal more that Patrick Condon has on mind that you’ll want to attend to when you listen for all of the detailed explanation in his unassailable plan, fiscal and otherwise, for creating a fairer, more just, and more inclusive city for all, a legacy for Patrick, and as he says a capstone for his career — and for all of us, the realization of the city we need.