Tag Archives: team

#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 | Making Members of the Media Your New Best Friends

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

In 314 days, voters go to the polls to elect the next Vancouver civic government.

For which Mayoral candidates will voters cast their ballots, which civic parties and which candidates for office will garner their support? How will Vancouver’s plethora of municipal parties get their ‘Elect Me, Elect Me’ message out to voters?

Social media? Advertising? All candidates meetings? Door knocking? Well-run, well-organized, ‘get out the vote’ civic campaigns for office, staffed by volunteers?

The Globe and Mail’s Frances Bula, the dean of Vancouver’s civic affairs reporters

All of the above, and … the media, members of the working press, and more specifically, the hard-working civic affairs reporters who have dedicated their lives to reporting on democratic engagement in Vancouver civic politics: the doyenne of Vancouver civic affairs reporters, Globe and Mail freelancer & Vancouver Magazine columnist, Frances Bula, who has dedicated her working life to reporting on the livable city.

And, the hardest working journalist in civic politics, The Vancouver Sun’s Dan Fumano; former much respected Vancouver Courier, and now much respected Business in Vancouver and Vancouver is Awesome municipal affairs reporter, Mike Howell; the indefatigable Kenneth Chan at Daily Hive Vancouver (how does he accomplish so much — after all, there are only 24 hours in a day?), who is also editor of Vancouver’s première online source for Lotusland news; and the man-of-good-cheer who loves charts, the CBC’s ‘I live to report the news’, the one, the only civic affairs and jack of all journalistic endeavours reporters, Justin McElroy.

And let us not forget, the longtime editor of The Georgia Straight, Charlie Smith — independently-minded, a man of tireless endeavour when it comes to reporting on civic politics, and so very much more, a man possessed of much wit, passion and compassion. And, his civic affairs reporting colleague at The Straight, Carlito Pablo.

Another primary source for coverage of Vancouver’s critically important upcoming municipal election is Bob Mackin’s theBreaker.news. Not familiar with, don’t know about, never visited the curries no favours with politicos, tells it like it is and gives you the straight goods, the source for real reporting on the civic events of the day, and the must-visit muckraking site, in the tradition of I.F. Stone, theBreaker.news is your source for breaking news on Vancouver’s civic affairs scene.

Make no mistake, it is Ms. Bula’s, Mr. Fumano’s, Mr. Howell’s, Mr. Chan’s, Mr. Smith’s, Mr. Pablo’s, Mr. Mackin’s and Mr. McElroy’s reporting, the stories they choose to tell and their interpretation of what they see and what they’re being told, how they feel about the worthiness of the candidates who are offering themselves for service to the residents of Vancouver, who will emerge as the factor of greater importance in the determination as to which party will govern as a majority at Vancouver City Hall — every one of Vancouver’s municipal parties want more than anything else to govern as a majority — as to who will emerge as Vancouver’s next Mayor, and who will sit as Vancouver City Councillors in the 2022 – 2026 term of office.

Current and probable candidates for Vancouver’s next Mayor: Ken Sim, with A Better City; Mark Marissen, with Progress Vancouver; John Coupar, with our city’s oldest and longest governing municipal party, the Non-Partisan Association; Colleen Hardwick, with TEAM … for a livable Vancouver; Wai Young, with Coalition Vancouver; Andrea Reimer, with Vision Vancouver; Patrick Condon, with the Coalition of Progressive Electors; Jody Wilson-Raybould, with OneCity Vancouver; and independent, current Mayor, Kennedy Stewart will all want to garner much attention from Vancouver’s respected, reputable and influence-making municipal affairs reporters, make these good folks of conscience their new best friends.

All the while, the current and probable Mayoral — and their party colleague — candidates will want to convince these all-important civic affairs reporters that they, and they alone, possess the key, the will power, the wit, the acumen, the knowledge of how government works, and the exquisite humanity to make Vancouver the affordable and livable city all Vancouver residents want and need, drawing support from across the political spectrum, across Vancouver’s economic strata and in every one of our city’s 23 diverse neighbourhoods, and across and in every critically-important ethnic community comprising the city we love so very much.

In addition, the CBC’s Early Edition host, Stephen Quinn — no fool, he, and ‘influencer’ of extraordinary proportion. Plus, CKNW’s talented and inquisitive, Simi Sara, who knows how to ask the pointedly unsettling question; Al Jazeera’s lover-of-all-things civic politics, and along with former Vancouver City Councillor (and sometime CKNW host), George Affleck, of The Orca podcast, Jody Vance; former publisher-editor of the much-missed and well-researched political affairs CityCaucus ‘blog’, Mike Klassen (who is VanRamblings’ 17-year-long webmaster), and his Vancouver Overcast podcast; and last but certainly not least, This is VanColour’s tough, yet fair-minded, Mo Amir, now on CHEK-TV, Sundays at 7pm.

The coverage that will be provided to all political candidates offering themselves for service in the municipal arena and asking for your vote — by all those journalists whose names appear above — is called ‘earned media’, and is — and has always been — of exponentially greater importance to candidates running for office — or at the very least, of equivalent importance — than the combined efforts of candidate campaign teams, the donations to political parties from members of the public who will fund the civic party campaigns, and the myriad of all-candidates meetings that will fill civic affairs calendars from the spring of 2022 on, through until Vancouver’s next civic Election Day, to be held on Saturday, October 15th, 2022.

Make no mistake — journalists represent the voice of the people.

Journalists are, and have always been, the information and news conduit between those who govern, or would propose to govern us, and Canadians, be it  provincially or federally — and because, municipally, journalists and candidates are so much closer to the residents of the city whose interests they represent than is true of senior levels of government, journalists should be seen as part of a candidate’s family, as they are members of the families of the 40% of the Vancouver electorate who will cast their ballot at an election polling station, just 314 days from today.