#VanPoli | False Creek South | The Heart of Our City Preserved

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2022, VanRamblings, , , , ,


REJECTED | City of Vancouver Real Estate Department Plan for False Creek South

In early October, when the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department presented a sordid, mercenary plan for the redevelopment of False Creek South —  that parcel of land on the south side of False Creek stretching from the Cambie Street bridge to the Granville Street bridge — Mayor Kennedy Stewart the very next day came out in full-throated support of The Plan, writing in an overly solicitous column published in The Straight that averred …

“Great cities like ours can never stand still. We must always examine whether our city is meeting our needs, both for today and tomorrow.”

The Real Estate Department’s Plan called for a greedy financial return to the City, that sought to more than triple the existing density of homes in the False Creek South neighbourhood, from 2450 units to a reconfigured 6600 units.

The real cost of the Plan?

The absolute, utter destruction of the False Creek South neighbourhood, a decimation of the heart and demographic integrity of one of Vancouver’s most sustainable and livable districts — the ‘close-fisted’ Plan laying waste to existing housing co-operatives dotted throughout the neighbourhood, moving residents from their current locations to a ghettoized, ‘poor door’ stretch of land situated along the bustling, carbon emitting 6th Avenue traffic corridor.

Community outrage soon ensued.

As founding chair of the UBC urban design programme, Patrick Condon, wrote in an article in The Tyee , the City’s Real Estate Department’s Plan would …

  • Increase market condos nearly fourfold, from 688 to 2,350 units;
  • Increase by more than 13x market rental units, from 150 to 2020 units;
  • See all new buildings constructed at least six storeys tall, ranging up to 50 storeys tall at the Granville Street bridgehead. Today, most buildings on the district’s city-owned land are three to four storeys in height;
  • Shift the tenure mix on city-owned land from the current 36% market strata, 8% market rental & 56% non-market co-op / affordable rental units, to 35% market strata, 30% market rental, and 34% non-market co-op and affordable rental;
  • Eventually demolish most of the existing co-ops, with these sites reused for market rentals and market condos, or to expand Charleson Park.

As Robert Renger, a retired senior planner who worked with the City of Burnaby, wrote in a response article in The Straight to the column written by Mayor Stewart — as well as to supporters of the City of Vancouver’s Real Estate Department’s Plan for False Creek South, which accused False Creek South residents of both nimbyism and elitism …

  • 15% of FCS residents are children, with 11% freehold and 16% citywide;
  • 17.5% of False Creek South family households are single-parent, compared to 10.9% of False Creek South freehold and 15.9% citywide;
  • The income mix on FCS lands closely parallels that of the city as a whole.
  • The residents of False Creek South had long ago published a document they called RePlan , a thorough and critical vetting of the City’s proposed Plan for the False Creek South neighbourhood, writing that …

    “False Creek South offers a housing model that is affordable, resilient and community-focused, with a variety of affordable, mixed-income housing options that span a spectrum of housing tenures. We are calling on Vancouver City Council to protect the existing variety of affordable, mixed-income housing options in False Creek South, to eliminate the threat of housing insecurity on leased City land, to kick start community growth, and to create right-sized housing in the False Creek South neighbourhood.

    Let’s expand affordable, resilient, mixed-income, mixed-tenure housing communities. Vancouver needs to protect and create more housing that is community centred, diverse, equitable, inclusive and secure that spans all leasehold housing tenures, including permanent housing for people who have experienced or are at risk of homelessness.”

    On October 5th in a motion presented to her colleagues on Vancouver City Council, Councillor Colleen Hardwick did just that in calling for security of tenure for the beleaguered residents of False Creek South, whose ongoing residency in the neighbourhood would be jeopardized by the redevelopment Plan published by the City’s Real Estate Department. Before that motion could be discussed around the Council table, the members of Council sought to hear feedback from the residents of False Creek South, as well as citizens from right across the city.

    Councillor Colleen Hardwick + retired CoV planner / RePlan co-author , Nathan Edelson

    Long story short, after hearing from some 171 residents of the City of Vancouver — many of them children, now adults, who had grown up in the False Creek South neighbourhood — in, perhaps, the most moving series of addresses this or any other Council has ever heard, in an amendment motion presented by Councillor Christine Boyle, all 10 Vancouver City Councillors, with an about face by Mayor Kennedy Stewart, unanimously rejected the City Real Estate Department’s Plan for False Creek South, instead opting to turn the process of the redevelopment of False Creek South to the City’s Planning Department, which planning process will include respectful and extensive consultation not only with False Creek South residents, but engaged residents across the city at-large.

#Netflix | Oscar Fare Rolling Out in November

A & E, Cinema, Netflix, Pop Culture, , , , , ,

Although Red Notice is the blockbuster film Netflix is bringing to the streamer on Friday, November 12th — starring a Hollywood A-list cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds —  it is the “smaller films” that will prove to be the celebrated Gotham, Indie Spirit, Oscar and critics’ awards fodder come December and into 2022, when early in the morning of Tuesday, February 8th, the 2022 Oscar nominations will be announced.

As we all return to some semblance of “normal” —  whatever that means these days? —  now that British Columbia’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has lifted all indoor capacity limitations in movie theatres, arenas and elsewhere, in communities where full vaccination rates are on track to hit 90% or better at some point in November, and COVID infection rates are low, we can all look forward to a surfeit of serious-minded film fare to help us celebrate the coming holiday season.

On Friday, November 5th, VanRamblings will publish our full review of Passing —  already nominated for a raft of east coast film critic, ‘indie’ Gotham Awards, including Best Director, her first-time in that role, and a simply outstanding outing for British actress, Rebecca Hall, garnering, as well, a Best Screenplay nomination for her adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1920s novel; Tessa Thompson, for Outstanding Lead Performance (take our word for it, Ms. Thompson’s performance is more than well-deserving of all the accolades she will receive in the weeks and months to come); and the always luminous Ruth Negga (Loving), for Outstanding Supporting Performance, much-deserved recognition for her breathtakingly fine work here.

A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of the same ’20s-era Harlem that Larsen was so keen to be part of, Passing will be available on the Netflix streaming service come Wednesday, November 10th.

Not to be missed!

#CdnPoli | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and His Legacy Cabinet

Canada, Decision Canada 2021, Politics, , ,

At the end of Tuesday’s Curse of Politics podcast, politico Scott Reid intones …

“Anybody who thinks this is Justin Trudeau’s last term in office, and that sometime before 2024 he’s going to resign as Prime Minister is a fool. That sort of punditry is nothing but lazy ass journalism. There’s absolutely no evidence to support that thesis. Why would you want to resign from the most important elected office in Canada, where change for the better that can be wrought with you at the helm? Never mind all the perks of the office. Those folks just oughta get over themselves, and stop that shit. It serves nobody’s interests. Fuck those assholes.”

Welcome to VanRamblings’ political world — it ain’t an easy life, lemme tell ya.


The 2015 campaign for office, with future Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at English Bay

VanRamblings has long believed that Justin Trudeau is a reluctant Prime Minister, who would rather spend time with his family, enjoying a life out of the public eye. Even so, Mr. Trudeau believes that he is uniquely positioned to both make a difference, and to maintain his father’s legacy of a fairer and more just Canada. For now, and the foreseeable future, he will make the sacrifices necessary, in order to maintain his family’s progressive vision for our nation.

In 2003, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien tendered his resignation as Prime Minister of Canada, the first murmurings of what became known as the “AdScam Scandal” — involving illicit activities established to a fight a Parti Québécois government’s dreams of Québec independence, with tens of millions of dollars awarded to Liberal Party-linked ad firms in return for little or no work, where these ad firms maintained Liberal organizers, while donating much of their awarded monies back to Liberal party coffers — when in late 2005 a …

“Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities, headed by Justice John Gomery — which came to be known as “the Gomery Commission” — reported out, the Commission found that millions had been awarded in contracts without a proper bidding system, that millions more had been awarded for work that was never done, and that the Financial Administration Act had repeatedly been breached by the Liberal party government of Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien.”

The death knell of federal Liberal governments for a generation was sounded.

Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin lost the election he called in late 2005. The next federal Liberal Party leader, Stéphane Dion, lost again in the 2008 Canadian federal election, and in 2011 Liberal leader Michael “he’s just visiting” Ignatieff’s campaign saw the Liberals reduced to 34 meagre, ignominious seats, and fourth party status.

In late 2012, at the behest of family and longtime friends, political strategists Gerald Butts and Katie Telford — both senior policy advisors to Ontario Liberal Party leader Dalton McGuinty, dating back to 1999 — approached their former schoolmate and friend of some two decades, Justin Trudeau, and asked him to consider a run for the leadership of the federal Liberal Party of Canada.

On Sunday, April 14th, 2013, the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, not only won his leadership bid, with 80.1% of the vote to 10.2% for British Columbia MP Joyce Murray, his victory more a coronation.

Two and one half years later, on October 15, 2015, 42-year-old Justin Pierre James Trudeau was elected the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, having mounted a stunning, come from behind victory that saw the Liberal Party form a strong majority government of 184 seats in the House of Commons in Ottawa.

And since that day, Prime Minister Trudeau has not known a moment’s peace.

The governments of Justin Trudeau have wrought change for the better.

  • The Canada Child Tax Benefit has provided thousands of dollars more to 9 out of 10 Canadians families, lifting more than 40% of Canadian families out of poverty;
  • Marijuana and its by-products have been legal in Canada since 2017;
  • Tax cuts for middle class families, not the wealthy, have benefited 9 million Canadian families each year for the past six years;
  • After 10 years of Prime Minister Stephen Harper muzzling scientists in the Environment and Fisheries and Oceans department, and across his government, federal scientists have, since 2015, been afforded the opportunity to speak openly on government policy;
  • The Trudeau government has quadrupled funding for women’s shelters;
  • $9 billion to train thousands of new, highly-paid personal support workers;
  • Mark Jaccard, a professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management has written that the federal Liberal Party climate action plan is a “world best,” with the government’s closure of coal plants, and a carbon tax that will see greenhouse gas emissions in Canada reduced by 40% by 2030, among myriad other world leading initiatives;
  • Through the introduction of Bill C-14, the federal government introduced legalized medical assistance in dying, offering Canadians the choice to die with dignity to patients who are suffering intolerably.

Re-opening the Kitsilano Coast Guard base; providing support to 450,000 students by increasing Canada Student Grants by 50%; reopening and staffing nine Veterans Affairs service offices across the country — these are just a few of the accomplishments of the governments of Justin Trudeau over the past six years in what has emerged as one of the most progressive governments anywhere across the planet.

And yet, you just can’t get away from feeling that Justin Trudeau’s continuing sacrifice of the joys of a private life, and time with his family and friends, weighs ever more heavily on him with each passing day, the relentless attacks by the opposition parties and right-wing media (“Hello, Brian Lilley“), with the support of only 33.12% of Canadians at the polls in this most recent election — despite his 159-seat minority government win — ever more unbearable.

For however long this Parliament lasts, in what may be Mr. Trudeau’s final term in office, the next years will be ‘legacy years’ for his government on the issue of the environment — which is why, on Tuesday, he appointed Greenpeace activist and respected Québec environmentalist Steven Guilbeault as his newly-minted Minister of Environment and Climate Change, and the former activist Minister who held the portfolio, Jonathan Wilkinson, as the new Minister of Natural Resources, both Ministers set to work in tandem to address the issue of oil and gas extraction, and dedicated to moving Canada away from the extraction of fossil fuels.

A pan-Canadian, legacy $10-a-day child care plan already signed onto by seven provinces and one territory, with the Ontario government just wrapping up negotiations with the federal government, and both Alberta and New Brunswick, and the two other territories not far behind; $2.7 billion in increased funding for the National Housing Co-investment fund; $3 billion over five years to support the application of higher standards for long-term care homes; unprecedented investment in public transporation, from buses, commuter rail, and a 21st-century high-speed system of regional train systems; $18 billion over 5 years to improve quality of life and create new opportunities for people in Indigenous communities, while completing the work on eliminating boiled water advisories on Indigenous lands; 10 days of paid sick leave for federal workers; funding for improved ventilation in schools and legal protection for businesses that decide to require vaccinations — represent just a few of the necessary initiatives of the Trudeau government.

Scott Reid, Jenni Byrne and David Herle present below the most cogent analysis of the “shuffle” of the Trudeau Cabinet yesterday morning, in this third — and maybe, final — term of the Justin Pierre James Trudeau-led Canadian federal government.

#VanPoli | Melissa De Genova | Fighting for You on Vancouver City Council

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblings,

In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova was elected to a second term of office, finishing a solid third place in the polls with 53,251 votes, support for her re-election coming from across the city, in every one of the 23 neighbourhoods comprising our piece of paradise by the sea.

More than any other current Vancouver City Councillor, in the years since Ms. De Genova first assumed elected office in 2011, as a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, Melissa De Genova emerged from the outset and continues thru until this day as a champion and a fighter for the interests of working people.

Now, it is true that Ms. De Genova has a long and glorious, ought-to-be celebrated history of driving the members of Vancouver’s partisan and arrogantly self-righteous, so-called “left” just nuts, driving them around the bend at every turn, as often as she is able — which in her first seven years of elected office was often.

Melissa has no time for “politics” when there’s a job to be done, a seniors facility to be built, a senior level of government to finagle into doing her bidding to ensure the delivery of programmes and affordable housing to the residents of Vancouver.

Melissa De Genova is always ready to engage with the electorate, be it on social media or one-to-one in person (there’s not been much opportunity for the latter in these pandemic times). When Melissa is challenged on social media — which is often — she readily engages, setting out the rationale for a decision she has taken around the Council table, engaging with whatever miscreant, unnamed person who is hiding behind a faux identity on, say, Twitter, thoughtfully and methodically laying out why she has taken the decision she has.

Inevitably, these online tête-à-têtes devolve, with Ms. De Genova’s “challenger” resorting to invective and name-calling. But still, Melissa hangs in, always respectful. With a current Council rightfully afraid of the pit of despair that is Twitter in 2021, only OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle is Ms. De Genova’s equal when it comes to dialogue and informed response to the too often egregious and ferociously vicious nature of the engagement extant on the Twitter platform.

One of the great joys of VanRamblings life in recent years was observing Melissa go after Aaron Jasper and Niki Sharma — and much to her chagrin, Sarah Blyth — when the four sat on Vancouver Park Board. Aaron Jasper’s conduct towards Ms. De Genova was supercilious and condescending at all times, as if she was somehow “below” him, and undeserving of even one iota of humanity that might emerge from him during his time as Chairperson of the Vancouver Park Board.

At the time, during the course of Park Board meetings, Melissa remained respectful of the Chair and her Vision Vancouver colleagues around the Park Board table — but when the meetings ended, Melissa De Genova lit into her Vision colleagues with a vigour that was something (of a great delight) to behold, calling them out for their wrong-headed “in the pocket of (then, ruthless and none-too-stable City Manager), Dr. Penny Ballem,” and their utter failure to represent the interests of the citizens who voted to elect them as Vancouver Park Board Commissioners.

In 2014, Melissa De Genova ran for office under the Non-Partisan Association banner — all but bereft of support from the members of the 2014 NPA campaign team, and party President at the time, Peter Armstrong — and willed herself onto Council with a vitality, urgency and strength of purpose that so enraptured Vancouver’s voting electorate that she garnered an amazing 63,134 votes, placing a high fourth place at the polls, in her first run for elected office as a Vancouver City Councillor.

Never one to hide her light under a bushel, it wasn’t very long into her first term of office at Vancouver City Hall that Ms. De Genova came head-to-head with the seven-headed monster that was — back in the day, only 7 short years ago — Vision Vancouver, identifying early on the challenge with which she was confronted, most particularly in the form of Vision Councillor Andrea Reimer, whose every utterance directed towards Councillor De Genova dripped with a contemptuous condescension  that all but demanded a response from Council novice Melissa De Genova.

To say that Melissa gave as good as she got is to understate the matter.

Alas, that was then, and this is now.

During the current term of office Councillor De Genova has transformed from a fighter into a pussy cat, a ‘can barely stand on her legs’ kitten.

These past three years, what has happened to Vancouver resident champion and fighter for all that is right and good, challenger of her opposition colleagues, and ruthless yet still humane Council combatant, a woman who takes no truck nor holds any prisoners, the Melissa De Genova who calls out dissembling, self-righteous virtue signaling nonsense when one opposition Councillor or other makes a statement so ludicrous and offside that it all but demands a response from Vancouver’s warrior City Councillor.

“Melissa, Melissa, come out, come out from wherever you’ve been hiding! We need you! Please, be our champion once again.”

VanRamblings wrote yesterday that only two current City Councillors are assured re-election in 2022. We’d like to add Melissa De Genova to that list — but first she’s going to have to rekindle the fire in her belly that was once her electoral raison d’être, and re-emerge as the fighter for all that is right and good, and be seen to do so, if she is to emerge victorious in the 2022 election.

And, yes, VanRamblings is well aware of that damnable Code of Conduct that has stifled debate around the Council table this term of office at City Hall, with Green Councillor Adriane Carr the chief enforcer of this “we must play nice, never give the appearance of impugning the integrity of a staff person, presenter to Council, or woebegone citizen, because nicey-nicey is the order of the day on this current term Vancouver City Council — and, quite simply, I won’t have it any other way!”

What does VanRamblings hope wlll be Councillor Melissa De Genova’s response?