Non-Partisan Association: A Powerful Campaign of Understatement

September 15, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The Non-Partisan Association Facebook page — https://www.facebook.com/npavancouver

The folks who are seeking political office as members of the Non-Partisan Association, and have put their names forward in this 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign to garner your vote, constitute a retinue of decent, humble, and very bright, publically-minded servants of the public interest.
From the outset of the current Vancouver civic election campaign, NPA mayoralty candidate Kirk LaPointe made it clear that his party would run a “clean campaign”. All NPA candidates would be required to sign (and did so) an “issues not insults” code of conduct pledging that there would be no personal attacks by members of his party that would be directed to their “political foes”. As LaPointe stated when signing the pledge, “There is a very clear intersection with your conduct and your ability to perform your duties. All of us feel quite comfortable in the idea we’ve got rich, fertile territory to criticize policy, we don’t ever have to go into personal lives.”
In this 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign, mayoral hopeful Kirk LaPointe has made liberal use of a withering line about Vision Vancouver’s wrong-headed six years in power: “Vancouver is a great city, badly run.”
Who knows where the NPA grabbed that tag line — it’s effective, though.
On the face of it, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” would seem to suggest that those running with the Non-Partisan Association would be better city managers, and more astute protectors of the public purse.
In practice, though, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” serves as a reminder to voters, who have repeatedly taken Vision Vancouver to task for their egregiously “bad”, anti-neighbourhood, tower-driven, anti-park decisions. “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” implores us not to forget about just how unhappy we’ve been with Vision Vancouver in power.
Those living in the Langara neighbourhood were apoplectic about Mayor Robertson’s proposal to hive off half of the Langara Golf Course to sell to developers, while turning the other half of the golf course into a “park”.
A bad proposal with no support from neighbours of the golf course, and the residents of Langara, who saw through the sham, and realized that Vision’s actual intent was to diminish already scarce green space in their under-parked neighbourhood. Women who spoke up at Park Board were adamant that the trails around the golf course were safer as a consequence of the eyes of golfers on the runners and walkers. There was even a young Olympic medalist who told Park Board she trained on those trails as a child.
In this instance, as will be the case in so many other neighbourhoods across our city, “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” only serves to remind Langara residents about the anti-neighbourhood, anti-park policies of the Vision Vancouver civic administration, and the resource they could very well have lost, and might still lose if rumours of Vision’s intent to follow through on their original plans prove to be true, should Vision be re-elected.
And it’s not just Langara residents who will recall with ill feeling Vision’s “in the pocket of developers” ethos.

Mount Pleasant residents mounted a vigorous opposition to the Rize Development at Kingsway and Broadway, and lost;
Grandview Woodland residents decried Vision’s plan for massive tower complexes at both Clark Drive and Commercial Drive, six storey townhouses along Nanaimo Street, stacked townhouses along East 1st Avenue, and increased heights along East Hastings Street;
Hastings Sunrise residents won’t soon forget Vision Council’s decision to block Park Board from taking control of Hastings Park, in order that a “massive $310.5 million redevelopment” of the park might continue. You can bet that there aren’t going be a great number of Hastings Sunrise residents who’ll being casting a vote for Vision in 2014.

Whether you live in Kitsilano, where Vision Vancouver sought to pave large portions of Kitsilano Beach and Hadden Park.
Or you’re a West End resident who was opposed to STIR (the city’s wildly unpopular Short Term Incentives for Rental Housing programme, a giveaway to developers), which resulted in the tearing down of a church at 1401 Comox (originally slated for park space), putting up a 22-storey tower in its place, while at the same time adding a sixth tower to the Beach Towers complex, to name just a couple of examples of Vision development plans that met with West End neighbourhood opposition.
Or you’re a former resident of the Downtown Eastside who lost their affordable housing when Vision Vancouver failed to respond to adamant opposition to Wall Corp’s proposal to build a massive condominium complex at 955 East Hastings — which, when it was approved by a thoughtless Vancouver Council, displaced 200 longtime DTES residents.
Or, you’re one of the residents of the Fairview neighbourhood’s affordable housing development, Heather Place, who will be displaced as a consequence of Vision Vancouver’s decision to redevelop the site as a “market rental” development — effectively doubling tenants’ rents …
You can bet that with the litany of secretive, wrong-headed, non-consultative, anti-neighbourhood proposals that became fact over the course of Vision Vancouver’s six years in power that “Vancouver is a great city, badly run” will almost certainly emerge as the devastatingly powerful and understated meme of the 2014 Vancouver civic election campaign, a constant, daily reminder by Kirk LaPointe, and his Non-Partisan Association colleagues, that Vision Vancouver is not a municipal political party that is on your side, or was ever on your side, that indeed Vancouver was a great city, but under Vision Vancouver our city has been unforgivably badly and terribly run, and not run for you, but rather in the interests of developers.
“Vancouver is a great city, badly run” offers cogent, reflective comment — and a devastating indictment of Vision Vancouver’s six years in power, and a reminder that with Vision Vancouver gone from the municipal political landscape come the evening of November 15th that under a revitalized Non-Partisan Association municipal administration (members of the NPA would suggest), Vancouver might once again become a truly great city.

VIFF 2014: A Much-Changed, Yet Achingly Familiar Film Festival

September 4, 2014A & E, Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2014Raymond Tomlin

A knock-out sizzler, pulling you in to the 33rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival

The 2014 Vancouver International Film Festival is much-changed.
Oh sure, there are the same folks involved this year as in recent years, the venues will be the same as they were last year, but the films that will be screened at this year’s Festival (more A-listers than in years!) … and the utter loveliness that is newly-installed Executive Director Jacqueline Dupuis. And let’s not forget about that knockout ‘sizzler’ VIFF prelude video above, created by the folks at post pro media (I mean, like wow, wow, wow!).
As I have written previously, Alan Franey stepped down from the day-to-day running of the Festival, just after last year’s Festival came to a close. Alan, and Festival staff with whom I was in contact last autumn, insisted that there was a succession plan in place — and lo and behold, the successor was right in their midst, in the form and person of Jacqueline Dupuis, who had already worked with the Festival for a couple of years, in a (perhaps?) more ‘restricted’ Executive Director capacity.
In 2014, Ms. Dupuis has put her stamp on the festival, emerging very much as the reigning intelligence of VIFF 2014. Who’da thunk? Certainly not me, if you read last autumn’s October 13th VanRamblings column.
(By the way VIFF folks, mea culpa — I was wrong)

VIFF Executive Director Jacqueline Dupuis talking with VIFF Media Manager, Justin Mah

What were the chances that Jacqueline Dupuis, arriving from Calgary three years back, would find a family in the programmers and staff at VIFF, and in 2014 would emerge as the eminence gris of the Festival? In person, Ms. Dupuis possesses the charm and lack of guile you would find in a 22-year old, an openness to experience, and an almost wide-eyed wonderment in the living of a life encompassing the hours of her day — and here she is now, today, the matriarch of the Festival — lovely, strong, bright and principled, the leader in whom festival staff have vested their faith.

For those who are not familiar with the staff of the Vancouver International Film Festival, let me tell you about my observations: there is about the folks who work with VIFF an uncommon kindness, integrity and humanity, as well as an intelligence matched with an unerring sense of purpose.

VIFF Programme Manager PoChu Au Yeung, and retired broadcaster, J.B. Shayne

There is amongst the fine folks who work with the festival, a feeling that is palpably shared among all those who are associated with the festival, of a higher purpose, a humanity and warmth and caring — not just for the city, or for those of us diehard cinephiles who live for our festival-by-the-sea each and every autumn, but for one another, full-time and part-time administrative staff, and volunteers. VIFF may be possessed of the most functional administration of any arts organization on the continent.
There is the quiet, zen-like presence of the festival’s Director of Programming, Alan Franey, right on through to Alan’s longtime second-in-command PoChu Au Yeung (a relationship of equals that has sustained for years), through to this year’s kind and generous programme guide editor Curtis Woloschuk, as well as longtime Canadian Images programmer Terry McAvoy, the entirely magnificent Shorts International programmer Sandy Gow — about whom we wrote a couple of years ago — with longtime VIFF stalwart Jack Vermee back from France for another go-round, and Vancity programmer Tom Charity very much a part of the family, all of whom share a common sense of purpose, but more, oh so much more.

As per the title of this blog post, you probably want to know how it is that VIFF33 is different from all of the previous VIFFs. Okay, here we go …

It would appear that with the Toronto Film Festival engaged in a dispute with the Telluride Film Festival, the Vancouver Film Festival has snuck in and snagged a record number of A-list Hollywood films — a welcome departure in programming orientation from years past.
From Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild — starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Gaby Hoffmann — the Opening Gala film at VIFF 2014 (the film played to raves at Telluride, and is also on the TIFF schedule), to the closing Gala Film, Whiplash — the breakout film at Sundance earlier in the year, and also on the TIFF schedule — through to certain Oscar nominee, Bennett Miller’s incredibly well-reviewed Foxcatcher — débuted at Cannes, just screened at Telluride, and screening at TIFF; Olivier Assayas’ Cannes stunner, Clouds of Sils Maria; David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars; Jason Reitman’s much-anticipated Men, Women & Children; Xavier Dolan’s Mommy; to the five-star, scalp-prickingly scary It Follows, the 33rd annual Vancouver International Film Festival will be a festival to be savoured and appreciated.

Second, in all the years I’ve covered VIFF, I’ve never heard Alan Franey wax as poetically enthusiastic about as wide a range of the films that are scheduled to screen at VIFF. When video of Alan’s address to the VIFF Launch / Media Conference is made available (apparently, a week Monday), I’ll post it on VanRamblings. Believe me when I write that Alan’s “guide” to VIFF33 could very well prove to be the definitive guide to this year’s Fest.

This year, for the first time, the VIFF guide will be FREE (yes, you read that right: free). The guide is glossy (forgive the photo above — the guide is actually a brilliant white), may be found at your favourite video store or book store, at libraries and all around town, as well as at the Vancity Theatre, and is available now, at least a couple of weeks earlier than usual, just as valuable as ever, and an absolute must cinephile acquisition.

What is the same about this year’s Festival, compared to previous years?
Fabulous, mind bogglingly beautiful films, a great team of VIFF administrative staff and volunteers, incredible venues (The Centre for the Performing Arts is back again this year!), and the best (if, often, most challenging) time you’ll have in a darkened cinema all year long, as well as a window on our diverse world that provides a par excellence experience.
What is different?
Well, I’d say a brighter, more contemporary, more business-like and almost aggressively engaging spirit that is just going to draw you in like never before, incredible ‘of this age’ sizzler videos that will drive business to the Festival like mad (I’ll post them as they become available), a renamed and focused VIFF Industry Conference (more on this in the days to come), a raft of new sponsors, that great new free VIFF programme guide — and more, of course, but you’re just going to have to check it out for yourself.
Tickets are now available online, and as of September 13th will be available in person at the Vancity Theatre box office, from noon til 7pm daily.
On the weekend, I’ll write more about the specific VIFF 2014 series and films, will post more video, provide more information on venues, and will publish much much more. This is gonna be a great festival — see ya there!

Decision 2014: Tim Louis Says Vision’s Vision is Getting Blurry

August 27, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

Reprinted with the permission of the author of the article, Tim Louis.

Mr. Louis was a two-term member of Vancouver City Council, and will be a 2014 Coalition of Progressive Electors candidate for a Council nomination. COPE’s nominating conference will be held Sunday, September 7th.

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In politics, as in our personal lives, sometimes we need to revise our expectations. Other times, we have to admit we are wrong; we are required to concede that we simply did not do enough.
In the case of Vision Vancouver’s highly touted and infinitely flexible promise to end homelessness, it appears that a rather shady third option is taking place. Rather than admit fault, Vision is redefining the terms to distract the public while keeping developers as its main allies.
Since its inception in 1937, the NPA (Non-Partisan Association) has been the developer’s party.
For the NPA, an attitude of “everyone should enjoy the fruits of their labour” means that a developer’s application for rezoning is rarely turned down. Under the old NPA and relative newcomer Vision, Vancouver has been governed to maximize developer profit, not public well being.
In 1968, COPE (Coalition of Progressive Electors) was founded as an alternative to the developer’s party.
Today, the political landscape consists of not one developer party, but two: NPA and Vision. As such, COPE has always run at a disadvantage because the NPA is lavishly funded by developers, as is Vision.
Although both of the developer-backed parties make showy presentations of their dedication to free enterprise and good business practice, it is COPE that actually practices truth in advertising.
COPE candidates are pledged to uphold the policy positions democratically adopted in open meetings, unlike the developers’ parties, who enjoy the fruits of developing their platform behind closed doors by a chosen few.
Vision Vancouver is a version of the NPA with bicycle lanes. Some observers refer to Vision as NPA Lite.
Meanwhile, COPE is sticking to the principles of social justice and offering an unambiguous alternative to these developer parties.
COPE is the only party offering a clear and concrete proposal to address the crisis of homelessness. With the creation of a Vancouver housing authority, COPE proposes to build thousands of units of subsidized and affordable housing which would be owned and operated by the city.
Instead of following a plan to produce results, Vision has played games with the issues of housing affordability and homelessness.
Here is one example of Vision game playing. Vision simply redefines the term “affordable housing” to include any rental housing so that when a developer applies for rezoning, the bylaw that requires a certain number of units to be affordable is meaningless. Permits are issued because any rental units, no matter how expensive, are being considered affordable when there are actually very few who are able to pay the rent.
Earlier this year, the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count revealed that homelessness has increased in our community. Vision’s 2008 campaign promise to end homelessness by 2015 has been a failure. Scrambling to save face, Vision has changed the message to claim that what they actually intended to do was end street homelessness.
Although someone who uses a shelter may not be considered street homeless, they must still be counted as a person without a home. Anyone staying in a shelter is required to leave in the morning and stay scarce until evening is essentially homeless during the day.
A home is more than a place to sleep.
Vision arbitrarily changes the meaning of terms at will, in a dazzling example of what the great English satirist George Orwell called “Newspeak” in his classic study of tyranny, 1984. Rumours that the book’s character Big Brother is now on stipend to write press releases for Vision cannot be confirmed at this point, but remain plausible.
Regardless, Vision’s underhanded revisions of language are the party’s attempt to convince the public that they are standing firmly on some sort of platform rather than tumbling with the lint in developers’ pockets.
Don’t we want a city council that positions itself firmly outside the fiscal influence of developers?
It’s COPE that has the real plan to address the important issues of homelessness and affordable housing.

Vancouver House: Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Heads

August 21, 2014BC Politics, Decision 2014, Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

The folks in the Cedar Party are at it again, telling us stuff that we already know. Like how there was only one bidder — WestBank Corp, owned by Mayor Gregor Robertson’s bestest pal and big time Vision Vancouver supporter, Ian Gillespie — on the property where the much-touted Gesamtkunstwerk Vancouver House will be built. We say, so what? If the Mayor wants to gift his good friend Ian with ‘special favours’, so be it.

But are the noisome folks in the Cedar Party prepared to leave it at, “That Ian Gillespie fella, he has this in with the Mayor, and with Vision Vancouver, you see, and there’s just something a little unsavoury about the whole circumstance where there was only one bidder allowed on the Vancouver House site, and don’tcha know that bidder was Ian Gillespie, and doesn’t it somehow seem wrong to you that Ian Gillespie ‘was allowed to tie up this property for several years without paying for it until final approvals were granted, which only occurred recently?” Nope. They just can’t leave it alone!
That Glen Chernen fella — you know, he’s the Mayoral aspirant for the Vancouver Cedar Party — and his hearty band of civic miscreants — I mean, really, who are they to be asking questions of our esteemed Mayor and his fabulous gang of demogogues at Vancouver City Hall, the once and forever Vision Vancouver party that will rule over us for our own good, whether we like it or not, for generations to come — where does the Cedar Party get off having the temerity to ask a question like, “How can the interests of Vancouver residents be seen to be looked after if our local government gives itself the unilateral right to sell off city-owned land without even passing consideration being given to the notion of competitive bidding for the sale of our precious, ‘belongs to the people of Vancouver’, property?”
Who do the folks at the Vancouver Cedar Party think they are? Heck, you’d think they live in Vancouver, and have a dog in our 2014 civic electoral fight.
Oh, you mean, these Vancouver Cedar Party folks, they do actually live in Vancouver, and they’re running candidates to defeat Vision Vancouver this November 15th. Good luck to them, those newby civic electoral naïfs — as if that’s going to happen, given the millions of dollars that developers have poured into Vision Vancouver coffers these past six years, and more!

And to top it off, Chernen and his bothersome, irksome group of detectives go about quoting a July 28, 2014 Sam Cooper article in The Province newspaper — but three weeks late, cuz Green Party of Vancouver Council candidate Pete Fry had already written a blog post about the 52-storey Westbank project at the north end of the Granville Bridge.
And, just like the folks at the Cedar Party, Pete Fry goes and sticks his nose where it don’t belong, and casts aspersions on the character of the Mayor and his Vision Vancouver colleagues, in having approved the Vancouver House development (you remember Vancouver House, with that annoying ‘star’ architect Bjarke Ingels on our TV every night, endlessly overselling just how wonderful Vancouver House will be once it’s finished) — not that anyone in Vancouver will be able to afford to live there, but like who cares anyway, except maybe the Cedar Party, and Pete Fry, both of whom point out that Vancouver House is being marketed exclusively (an allegation since corrected) to wealthy overseas buyers — replete with (gosh, wouldn’t it be nice?) “special absentee owner concierge services and a fleet of luxury BMWs on reserve”. But there you go again, with those annoying Cedar Party folks, and Fry, chiming in with a quote from Cooper’s article:

“According to the South China Morning Post, two sales offices were opened in Hong Kong in June … (with units) marketed in Singapore … reserved for overseas buyers … (meeting with an) overwhelming response.”

As we say, looks like folks from Vancouver won’t be able to afford Vancouver House, anyway — well, certainly not you or me.
Like, so what, eh? The folks who live in Vancouver have bigger things to worry about — will the kids be back in school on September 2nd, or when to set aside some time to go to the PNE, and important stuff like that.
Who does that Pete Fry guy think he is, anyway, questioning his betters — I mean, Geoff Meggs and Andrea Reimer, they done got themselves elected to Council, and the folks who live in Vancouver put their trust in them, and now youse got this Pete Fry fella askin’ questions, like somehow he’s got a right to ask questions of his betters. Gosh, we think not. Heck, you’d think that there was an election going on, or sumptin’ like that there.
And, don’tcha know — probably under a threat of a lawsuit — The Province pulled the original story, and all readers can find now is this correction.
Thank goodness the Non-Partisan Association seems to think that the Vancouver House skullduggery is just fine, with nary a peep from NPA Mayoralty hopeful Kirk LaPointe — although, one supposes, these are early days in Campaign 2014. LaPointe will certainly have to enunciate a position on development once the civic election campaign begins in earnest.
Let us hope that the NPA narrative on development in our city differentiates itself from the Vision Vancouver development narrative, which is …

“Hey folks, it’s only development we’re talkin’ about here. You should let your betters make decisions on your behalf, cuz we know what we’re doing, and you don’t. Honest, there’s nothing to see here folks, just move along. Don’tcha know, the PNE is on, and there’s this darn teacher’s strike that’s happenin’, you don’t want to worry your pretty little heads with something as stupid and arcane as development. Ewww, that’s yucky stuff — you’re not really interested in that. Oh look — a bright shiny object. Pretty, isn’t it?”

And thank god, too, that the naïfs and ne’er-do-wells over at COPE headquarters could give a good goddamn about secretive and unsavoury development in our city — gosh, they’re only concerned with turning our city into a communist paradise. Me, I can’t wait til they issue the drab grey uniforms that we’ll all have to wear when COPE takes over — gosh that’ll be no fun, and don’tcha know that’s exactly what COPE wants, for all of us to live under the yolk of COPE oppression. Gosh, that oughta be great!
And best of all, thank God we’ve got such a subservient media, who wouldn’t say shit if their mouths were full of it. Well, it is Vision Vancouver, after all, and who in the media would dare to question the majority party that has reigned supreme at Vancouver City Hall these past six years?