Tag Archives: onecity vancouver

#VanPoli | Mayor Ken Sim and the Sadly Premature Death of ABC Vancouver

#VanPoli Civic Politics, Park Board, Politics, Vancouver, , , , , , , , ,

 

ABC Vancouver, the upstart Vancouver civic party that only 22 months ago ascended to super majority status at Vancouver City Hall, with mayoral candidate, businessman and novice politico Ken Sim achieving a record number of votes on election night, Saturday, October 15th, 2022, carrying seven Councillors on his coattails to victory, to dominate civic politics, in August 2024 is a municipal party — although once celebrated — very much in freefall and worrisome disarray.

In a recent conversation with a long serving, retired Vision Vancouver City Councillor, the Councillor told us of her many conversations with ABC Vancouver’s electeds, who have expressed to her — as has been the case with VanRamblings’ conversations with various ABC Vancouver electeds — a distress and a mournfulness at the goings on at Vancouver City Hall, in the main emanating from the Mayor’s office and his “bullying staff”, an unfortunate and disconcerting arbitrariness, a lack of consultation, respect and engagement (not to mention prior notice) involving a series of “surprising” dictums by Mayor Ken Sim.

None more surprising, of course, than the arbitrary and unilateral reversal by Mayor Ken Sim of ABC Vancouver’s commitment to, and support of, a much cherished Vancouver institution, the 135-year-old elected Vancouver Park Board.

Following a week-long sojourn in ABC Vancouver founder Peter Armstrong’s luxurious, well-appointed yacht up British Columbia’s west coast, Ken Sim arrived back in Vancouver in early December of 2023 to announce — with the shortest possible notice to his fellow ABC Vancouver electeds — of his intention to ask the province to change the city charter, to shift Park Board’s responsibilities to Council, in the process unilaterally eliminating our cherished 135-year-old elected Park Board.

Where else has Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver gone wrong, losing the support of a Vancouver populace who elected the civic party with so much hope for better?

  • Shuttering the Rental Office at Vancouver City Hall, established by the previous Council to help renters. Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver promised to transfer the funds  allocated to the Rental Office to TRAC — the Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre — in the process committing, as well, to move TRAC into a newly renovated, City-owned building on Howe Street, neither of which commitments have been fulfilled to date;
  • In the most unconscionable manner, scrapping Vancouver’s Livable Wage Programme that certified employers who provide services and supplies to the City of Vancouver pay a living wage of $25.68 per hour to their employees;
  • Increasing property taxes by the highest amount ever, in December 2022 by 10.7%, and in December 2023, by 7.5%. Note should be made that in Port Coquitlam, Mayor Brad West’s City Council raised the 2022 property tax by 3.55% and in 2023, by 5.58%, all while providing supportive and affordable housing, and a new community centre;
  • Restricting public access to Council decision-making by allocating only 3 minutes rather than 5 minutes to citizens addressing their concerns to Council, while disallowing Councillors the opportunity to ask clarification questions to speakers;
  • Committing to hiring 100 police officers, and 100 public health nurses for an expanded Car 87 mental health programme, fulfilling only the first part of ABC Vancouver’s commitment to the citizens of Vancouver.

More concerns about Ken Sim, in particular: Mayor Ken Sim has missed a full one-third of Council meetings during his 21-month tenure as Mayor. As of March of this year, Sim had been marked absent 222 times, including during the vote on one of his most significant campaign promises.

As Stewart Prest, a lecturer in political science at UBC, told CTV Vancouver …

“I think when we start to get to the range of missing one vote in three, it’s worth asking the question of whether the Mayor is actually showing up to do the job that he was primarily elected to do,” Prest said.

“The Mayor is elected, first and foremost, to represent Vancouverites at Council and if the Mayor is missing in action for a significant amount of those deliberations – even apart from casting the vote – if the Mayor is not there to offer his perspective, then there may be the appearance, if not the reality of not doing a crucial part of his job,” Prest told CTV News.

Concern was expressed recently when, presiding over an emergency Council meeting that would effectively stop the work of Vancouver City Hall’s Integrity Commissioner, Lisa Southern, Mayor Sim wore a baseball cap, T-shirt and light running shorts to Council, lessening the dignity of the office, as if somehow Mr. Sim is not the Mayor of Canada’s third largest city, but an interloper at City Hall.


Lisa Southern, Integrity Commissioner, City of Vancouver

Of course, attempting to shutter the office of the Integrity Commissioner, disallowing Commissioner Southern from investigating and weighing in, purportedly, to complaints leveled against the Mayor and members of his ABC Vancouver Council contingent, is only the latest “scandal” to befall Vancouver’s inept, part-time, decidely unserious, and let’s face it “not fit for the job” baseball cap wearing Mayor.

Former Vancouver Sun Managing Editor / publisher-editor of Business in Vancouver / 2014 candidate for Mayor of the City of Vancouver, Kirk LaPointe, weighs in on the Southern fiasco …

“What appeared to be a routine motion to get a third-party review of the mandate was amended at the meeting to propose freezing Southern’s work for an indefinite period until the review was complete. This isn’t standard practice while mandates are reviewed — usually, it’s just business as usual while the amendments are assembled — and critics immediately wondered if Council was just trying to silence the Commissioner and the complainants. (The Mayor’s chief of staff insists the review would be done swiftly.)

The amendment passed, but Council needed another recent meeting to amend the bylaw for its measure to take effect. Meantime, Southern got busy writing and releasing two reports arising from complaints. One complaint (from a Park Board Commissioner) alleged Sim and his officials tried to influence Park Board decision-making and leadership, and a second complaint (filed by Sim’s senior advisors) alleged two Park Board Commissioners contravened the City’s code of conduct by recording and sharing phone calls they made to one of them. Southern dismissed both complaints, but her reports on them splayed open the discordant municipal political culture.

It appeared we were headed for a work freeze, but on the day before the meeting, another complaint about the ABC Councillors landed with the Integrity Commissioner from an opposition Councillor, the Green Party’s Pete Fry (son of Liberal MP Hedy Fry). Details of the complaint aren’t yet public, but Fry decided to inform Councillors and the city manager of his complaint as it was filed. In doing so, he stymied Councillors from voting on the freeze of Southern’s work. After all, in being named in the complaint, they would have been conflicted and have to recuse themselves at least until the Commissioner’s office could investigate and rule on it.

Out of caution, Sim adjourned the meeting until late September, but not before chiding Fry and insisting again that his goal was an improved Integrity Commissioner’s office. Two things were most evident at the meeting: Sim’s frustration, and the surprising absence of two of his own ABC Councillors (ed. clearly unhappy, Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh) from a meeting where one would think solidarity and attendance would be a whipped must.”

LaPointe raises further concerns, in writing …

“Last week, the ABC Vancouver Chair of the School Board, Victoria Jung, quit ABC Vancouver to sit an an Independent over the integrity issue; she may not be the last to leave, and each departure further fritters the momentum of the 2022 mandate most everyone thought would be so empowering.”

For some time now, there’s been a movement afoot to create a Unity Slate for the 2026 Vancouver municipal election that would be backed by the Vancouver District & Labour Council, such Unity Slate that could include Melody Ma, Council candidates from COPE (think Tanya Webking, Derrick O’Keefe), TEAM (Colleen Hardwick, Cleta Brown or Sean Nardi), former Vision Vancouver electeds (Overdose Prevention Society founder, Sarah Blyth and/or former Park Board Chair, Aaron Jasper), One City Vancouver (Dulcy Anderson and/or Tessica Truong),  Green Party electeds (Pete Fry and/or Adriane Carr), and former ABC Vancouver electeds, now Independents (Scott Jensen, and/or Laura Christensen / Brennan Bastyovanszky).

Unity Slate Mayoral candidates: BC NDP MLA Mable Elmore, or NDP MP Don Davies.

#VanPoli | ABC Vancouver Popularity Plummets, OneCity + Greens Rise

#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Park Board, Politics, Vancouver, , , , ,

In the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, the upstart ABC Vancouver civic party — a creation of founder / financier Peter Armstrong — came out of nowhere to secure an overwhelming victory at the polls, securing 34.5% of the vote, with the Greens trailing at 11.24%, and OneCity Vancouver managing 9.79% in voter popularity.

How ABC Vancouver’s fortunes have changed only 15 turbulent months later.


Saturday, October 15, 2022 | ABC Vancouver wins the Mayor’s chair, electing eight City Councillors

Let us count the ways in which ABC Vancouver has lost popularity with the public.

  • ABC Vancouver’s first budget raised property taxes by a whopping, unprecedented 10.7% (triple that for small business), alienating huge portions of the public;
  • ABC Vancouver jettisoned the City’s Livable Wage Programme, which pays the employees of suppliers of goods and services to the city approximately $24-an-hour;
  • ABC Vancouver shuttered the City’s Rental Office, telling the public that the monies it took to run the Rental Office would be transferred to TRAC, the Tenant Resources and Advisory Centre, and would move TRAC into new offices on Howe Street downtown.

    Surprise    , surprise, TRAC has not moved into the new offices that had been promised, which three years on remains under construction, and in addition, has yet to receive one red cent from the City. You gotta love “conservatives”: they lie like we breathe;
  • On December 13, 2023,  Vancouver’s rookie Mayor, Ken Sim, announced that his ABC Vancouver City Council would abolish the cherished 135-year-old Vancouver Park Board,  with an application to the province to change the Vancouver Charter to facilitate an undemocratic, unmandated, appalling change in City governance.

In 2022, a paltry 36.3% of eligible voters turned out at the polls to elect a new Vancouver City Council, School Board and Park Board — which means that the vast majority of Vancouver voters … 63.7% … stayed home, and couldn’t be bothered to, either, inform themselves of the issues in the last Vancouver municipal election, or take an hour or less to attend at their local polling station to cast their ballot.


Global BC newscasters Chris Gailus and Sophie Liu host B.C.’s top-rated suppertime news programme

Numeris (formerly the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement) is Canada’s audience measurement organization, tracks our country’s highly fragmented and increasingly complex media landscape, as it attempts to bring clarity and an understanding of audience behaviours and insights to an evolving cross-media landscape.

According to Numeris, only 18% of British Columbians tune in to watch news programmes on Global BC, CTV Vancouver, CBC Vancouver and CityNews, and their local affiliates’ news programmes. Where, then, do British Columbians get their news, if 82% of B.C. adults don’t get their news from television news programmes?

Newspapers remain a popular deliverer of the news for people age 35 and older.

The findings of a study held in Canada between October 2022 and September 2023 revealed that 32% of Canadians only read print newspapers on a weekly basis, whereas 6% read newspapers via computer only. For those persons between the ages of 35 and 49 across all regions in Canada, only 23.89% of persons in that age bracket read, watch or listen to the news once a week or more.

A growing number of people selectively avoid news stories, such as the war between Israel and Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the cost-of-living issue.

Thirty-eight per cent of those surveyed actively avoid the news, up from 29% in 2021, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Around 36% — particularly those under age 35 — say that the news lowers their mood.

“Large numbers of people see the media as subject to undue political influence, and only a small minority believe most news organizations put what’s best for society ahead of their own commercial interest,” writes Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, in a Reuters report based on an online survey of 93,432 people, conducted in 46 markets across Canada.


Gen Z (1997-2012) and Millennials (1980-1996) acquire news, predominately, from their Tik Tok app

Younger audiences, those under 45, are increasingly accessing the news via platforms such as TikTok, or from their friends, and have a weak connection to online or conventional media. Forty percent of that age group uses TikTok daily, with 15% saying they use it to find, discuss or share news.

What is the context and meaning of the preceding information, and its impact on Vancouver politics, the current fight to preserve Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation, and the re-election chances of ABC Vancouver come 2026?

Where Vision Vancouver’s success in their ten years at the helm of politics in Vancouver was dependent on three groups who consistently turned out in droves to support the party at election time …

  • Unions. Vision Vancouver set the wage scale agenda during their time in power,  not just locally, but in municipalities across British Columbia and beyond, in the public sector where it moved the provincial government off its 1-1-1 agenda, and by extension in the private sector, the union vote in the City of Vancouver, loyal and consistently good for 45,000 votes at the polls in strong support for Vision Vancouver;
  • The active transportation lobby (think: Hub Cycling), who are committed to bike lanes and a healthy, environmentally friendly and livable city, with fit, cycling Millennials turning out in droves to re-elect Vision Vancouver at election time; and …
  • The 2SLGBTQIA community, whose support Vision Vancouver worked tirelessly to gain and maintain, and for whom it could depend on at least 20,000 votes at the polls — as was the case with the bike lobby — in the 2008, 2011 and 2014 civic elections.

ABC Vancouver has no natural constituency in our decidedly progressive, left-of-centre, NDP-voting city on the far shores of western Canada.

The 2022 Vancouver municipal election was a “kick the bums out” election, with dismayed, disgruntled and disquieted Vancouverites sick-and-tired of a lazy, do-nothing, whiny Kennedy Stewart administration, which had non-productive relations provincially with John Horgan’s NDP government, federally with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party of Canada, and in 2022 with the Vancouver electorate.

As we say, ABC has no natural constituency in the voting Vancouver electorate, their election to civic government in 2022 a blip on the political radar, and consequent from a dissatisfaction among the electorate with the previous administration, a well-run campaign by master electoral tactician and motivator, Kareem Mahmoud Abbas Allam, and bucketfuls of money from Rocky Mountaineer tourism founder Peter Armstrong, and Lululemon lifestyle founding promoter, Chip Wilson.

Well, Mr. Allam is gone now — having pulled away from ABC Vancouver one year ago —  the powers that be at The Vancouver Club and Terminal City out for blood and set to do all in their power to oppose the re-election of Ken Sim and company, not to mention a significant and engaged majority of the 36.3% of Vancouver voters who turned up at the polls in 2022 also out for blood, alienated beyond all measure with the autocratic, anti-democratic administration of Ken Sim and his crew of “we’ll go along to get along, and do whatever” ABC Vancouver lickspittles.

The Sword of Damocles hangs ominously and precariously over the heads of the “certain to be one term” ABC Vancouver administration at Vancouver City Hall, the arbitrary and unilateral move to eliminate Vancouver’s cherished Park Board — which over the past 135 years has given the citizens of our province a world class parks and recreation system — the final straw, as engaged Vancouverites in high dudgeon, certain to work towards not the elimination of the Vancouver Park Board, but the elimination of the “they know the cost of everything, and the value of nothing” ABC Vancouver civic party from the political landscape of our city.