Tag Archives: #vanpoli

#VanElxn2022 | Anomie, Alienation, Chaos Carry The Day in #VanElxn22

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

Truth to tell, VanRamblings despairs over the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

Not that Vancouver’s 2022 municipal election differs all that much from the Vancouver civic elections of 2011, 2014 and 2018: same partisan sniping, same crass behaviour from supporters — whether paid, or otherwise — emerging from the various parties, as well as the candidates themselves.

Among the electorate, anomie would seem to be the order of the day, with polls showing upwards of 40% of Vancouver’s electorate either undecided as to which party and which candidates they’ll be supporting as voting gets underway in as little as three weeks from now —  if those citizens intend to vote at all, so alienated and cynical are they about the prospects of any of the parties, or their candidates, acting to build affordable housing for the average wage earner in Vancouver, or remedying an increasingly disturbing public safety issue in our city, where —  as was broadcast on Global BC, recently —  upwards of 1500 random, unprovoked attacks on innocent victims have occurred in Vancouver since the outset of the year.

Forward Together & ABC Vancouver Prepare to Knock Each Other Out

VanRamblings is being inundated with assurances that Stanley Q. Woodvine “finding” Forward Together’s donors list last week was not serendipity, but a planned attack by those behind the ABC Vancouver campaign to wipe out their main competition. VanRamblings has been told “it’s all too coincidental“, that it was planned, and we’re naïve if we believe any differently.

Bad blood, and greed. Meanwhile, VanRamblings has also been told the development industry supporters of the Mayor’s Forward Together party hired a team of investigators awhile ago to dig up dirt on ABC Vancouver and the party’s Mayoral candidate, Ken Sim —  and the party’s Council candidates seeking election, or re-election —  which material when released will devastate the ABC Vancouver campaign for office, while severely prejudicing this second newly-formed municipal party’s chances for success at the polls next month.

VanRamblings was advised the developer backers of ABC —  Rocky Mountaineer railroader, Peter Armstrong, and Lululemon founder, Chip Wilson —  don’t want to share the wealth with the likes of Vancouver Canucks’ owner Francesco Aquilini, Concord Pacific’s Terry Hui, and all of the other developer supporters of our city’s beleaguered incumbent Mayor, Kennedy Stewart.

Vancouver civic politics: a tangled web has been woven in the 2022 civic election that could knock out both leading developer-backed municipal parties.

Internal Party Polling: ABC Vancouver Leading, Forward Together Flailing

When VanRamblings arises from our slumber, we like to take a shower to wake us up. We have a shower radio to accompany us while showering, so we can listen to music. Of late that’s proven more and more difficult. Here’s why …

We have the radio tuned to 104.3 The Breeze. Turn on the radio: Ken Sim ad. Switch the station to Move 103.5. Ken Sim ad. Next up: 94.5 Virgin Radio. Ken Sim ad. Z95.3 FM. Yep, another Ken Sim / ABC Vancouver radio ad. Little wonder that Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver team are leading in the polls, given that they’re the only civic party running saturation radio ads across every demographic, while placing their increasingly sophisticated television ads on local evening news programmes.

Here’s what the latest internal party rolling polls are showing …

If the above polling is correct, that leaves Vision / One City, the Greens, COPE, and Vote Socialist sharing anywhere between 7% and 23% of the vote.

VanRamblings has been informed incumbents, the NPA’s Melissa De Genova is languishing at 13th, while OneCity’s Christine Boyle is mired at 16th.

The only Council candidates whose names we have been given that are in the top 10, and a shoe-in for election, or re-election: ABC’s Sarah Kirby-Yung and Mike Klassen; COPE’s Jean Swanson; TEAM’s Bill Tieleman (currently lodged at 6th); and, the Greens’ Adriane Carr and Pete Fry.

Otherwise, ABC’s Rebecca Bligh and Lisa Dominato have been bouncing in and out of the top 10, as has TEAM’s Sean Nardi, whose name appears first on the Council ballot voters will receive next month, and COPE’s Breen Ouelette, whose name appears second on the voters’ Council ballot.

Note should be made, as well, that standout Non-Partisan Association Council candidates Arezo Zarribian — one of VanRamblings’ very favourite candidates for office in 2022, whose name will feature prominently on our Women Council Candidates Endorsement List, in early October — and her very able, accomplished running mate, Cinnamon Bhayani (who we’re also pretty darn high on, for her integrity and élan), and our friend and longtime associate, Ken Charko, have also been featured in Council’s Top 10 candidates for election list sporadically, but quite often.

As is almost always the case when covering an election, there is far too much gamesmanship in the coverage and practice of politics throughout the election cycle, and too much reporting on the horse race aspect of media coverage.


Mayoral candidates, l-r: Kennedy Stewart, Colleen Hardwick, Ken Sim, Mark Marissen, Fred Harding

In an election, though, where voters don’t know where to place their vote, reporting on the placement of candidates for office, derived from both the leaked internal party polls, and the public polling you see reported online, on the radio, or during the evening news has a function — which is, the reporting of numbers and the foofaraw of the various shenanigans that help to define the election, generates voter interest, even if its prurient interest and not directed towards policy, or serious consideration of the issues that will determine the future of our beloved city.

#VanElxn | We Don’t Stay the Same, We Change, We Become More Human

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Fifty years ago, as an editor at The Peak —  Simon Fraser University’s student newspaper —  VanRamblings wrote a weekly column titled Know Your Local Ruling Class, wherein we would interview a member of the administration, various heads of departments, activist students, and many others.

One particular week, it was our good fortune to interview the head of the fledgling university’s Philosophy Department, someone with whom we had a cursory relationship, given that early on in our university career we had met with him to ask for a late admission to a philosophy course, and another time when he had subbed in for a philosophy professor attending a conference.

As was our wont, as we did each week and as was the case in our interview with the head of the Philosophy Department, we posed the following question: What one foundational lesson have you learned in your life that has most shaped you, most changed you, made you more human, and a better, more accepting person?

The Professor offered a two word answer to the question: people change.

“Some years earlier, I had a student, a supercilious young man who rubbed me the wrong way. I thought him ambitious but insincere, too much ready to provide whomever he was engaging with the information he thought the person might want to hear, an inveterate manipulator of people so as to serve his own good, means and end, someone who if truth be told I found to be something of a detestable human being.

Toward the end of his second year at the university,  much to my chagrin, he made the decision to declare a major in philosophy, for which endeavour he required my approval. As was my duty, the two of us met, and after some while, I granted his request to pursue an Honours degree in Philosophy within the department.

Just last year, after returning from a year long sabbatical, I was told that in my absence, the university had hired a new professor to teach in the department. Much to my dismay, I learned that this new professor was the student who had graduated some years earlier that I so detested, who had gone on to earn both a Masters degree and PhD in philosophy, with a focus on Epistemology, Ethics, and Logic. Of course, I was obligated to meet with him.

An offer was made to this newly hired professor to meet with me in my office one late morning, and perhaps go to lunch afterwards, which we did. To say that I was not looking forward to this meeting would be to understate the matter — nonetheless, we met.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered the young man who I had so detested had transformed into an engaging and authentic, mature young man, articulate and bright, well schooled in his areas of study and interest, and utterly charming and personable.

Not only did we attend lunch together, we continued our conversation throughout the afternoon and went out to dinner with a couple of colleagues, where the young man not only held his own, but led the group in a raucously delightful discussion.

Subsequently, with his permission, I sat in on a couple of classes he was teaching, and found him to be an inspiring and skilled teacher his students highly regarded, and if I might say, near worshipped, so engaging was he, such a compelling presence.”

As the good professor intoned: people change. No one of us, if we are possessed of any wit at all, are static in the conduct of our lives.

Such is true and we have found is more the case than that which we have witnessed over the course of the past four years respecting the transformation of 2022 TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick.

When Colleen Hardwick began her term in office, she was intent on embracing her father Walter Hardwick’s legacy as a city builder, and in a rush to burnish that legacy through the introduction of a generational, deeply citizen engaged consultation that would result in something she called The Vancouver Plan, the first motion she presented at Council early in her nascent term of office.


Colleen Hardwick and her daughter,  Kathryn (Kat), at the 1984 Liberal Party leadership convention in Ottawa, fighting for child care, fighting for change, as she has always, throughout her life. 

The orientation led by staff that took place in November and December 2018 was for her a distraction, a delay in getting started on the work that needed to be done to reclaim the city after 10 years of a Vision Vancouver administration.

The purpose of the orientation was successful in part, though, because for a time it brought the novice Councillors closer together.

Surprising to Ms. Hardwick was her developing affection and respect for newly-elected 35-year-old OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle who, Councillor Hardwick told VanRamblings during the 2018 holiday season, from whom she had “learned so much.”

“I was laser focused on affordable housing as a core focus of my time on Council. I discovered that  the Council priorities of my fellow Councillors was not addressing the issue of affordable housing, but was instead focused on addressing our climate emergency, and reconciliation with our Indigenous Peoples.

Christine made it abundantly clear that British Columbians are living on stolen land, and that a necessary part of addressing the crucial issue of reconciliation was to move forward expeditiously on responding to the emergency climate crisis we’re all facing.”

Over the course of that holiday season, at the OneCity Vancouver Christmas party, VanRamblings had opportunity to mention to Councillor Boyle of Colleen Hardwick’s deepening affection and respect for her.

Ms. Boyle responded to VanRamblings by harrumphing, roughly pushing us aside and all but stomping across the room to speak with her acolytes. Soon after, at the beginning of 2019, Christine Boyle set about to create the despicable and wrongheaded narrative about Councillor Hardwick that she is “a rabid right winger,” an egregious notion which Ms. Boyle successfully promoted to the media and her fellow Councillors.

“I have identified as a left Liberal my entire adult life,” Ms. Hardwick has told VanRamblings, “and have worked with women to promote opportunity and fight sexism and misogyny, promoted the cause of unions as necessary to ensure the fair treatment of workers. To be dismissed as a right winger, is anathema to everything I’ve stood for, and worked for, over the past forty years.”

Early on in her Council term, Councillor Hardwick promoted The Vancouver Plan, as an idea whose time had come, an endeavour critical to the future of our city.

Unfortunately, the realization of The Vancouver Plan, as drafted by the City of Vancouver’s Planning, Urban Design and Development Services Department, and presented to Council in June of this year, bore no relation to The Vancouver Plan Ms. Hardwick had envisioned, as a deeply engaging, one-on-one community consultation, with people living in all Vancouver neighbourhoods.

Instead, at the direction of Council — in an anti-democratic amendment drafted by Councillor  Boyle, and seconded by Councillor Pete Fry — the Planning Department was instructed to conduct the consultation sans involvement with the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods — which Ms. Boyle called “an extra legal form of government, unrepresentative and without foundation” — directing staff to conduct a consultation through Talk Vancouver, “the City’s online community of local advisors,” an unauthenticated tool of engagement, which when The Vancouver Plan was presented to Council, Ms. Hardwick referred to as “deeply flawed,” the methodology employed in consulting citizens a sham, telling her fellow Council members she was “deeply saddened” by The Vancouver Plan presented to Council, which she argued should have put housing affordability front and centre.

“One of the many flaws of the Plan,” Councillor Hardwick told Council, “is City planners and Council members’ assumption that adding new supply lowers the cost of housing.” Hardwick told Council “that since the 1980s, Vancouver has added more housing than any other major North American city and it is still the most expensive place to live. We’ve tried adding more housing to address the need for affordable housing, and it didn’t work. If you want to help the many residents who are leaving the city due to high rents, you should insist that, going forward, at least 30% of development be made available to average wage earners.”

Councillor Colleen Hardwick went on to describe her notion of gentle density, and environmentally sustainable wood frame and mass timber construction over the “egregious, greenhouse gas-emitting concrete towers the development industry so loves” that would become “the new Vancouverism, incorporating the worst elements of Manhattan & Hong Kong towerism, devoid of humanity or livability.”

Colleen Hardwick is no longer in such an unrelenting hurry to transform the development ethos of Vancouver, as a singular, exclusionary focus of her endeavours as an elected official at Vancouver City Hall now, her only priority.

“Reconciliation is a core value as City Hall, and central to the discussion on how we as a city should move forward toward a sustainable future,” Councillor Hardwick recently told VanRamblings, in conversation.

In addition to building affordable housing, Colleen Hardwick is now focused, as well, on a democratic plan that would move Vancouver’s electoral system towards a mixed representation model that would elect five Councillors at large, with an additional five Councillors held accountable for representing five distinct districts across the city. Also important to Ms. Hardwick, should she be elected Mayor of Vancouver: re-implementation of Philip Owen’s Four Pillars Plan, and appointment of a Commissioner to draft a model of engagement for the DTES that would more effectively address that which needs changing for the better on Vancouver’s DTES.

A renewed focus on the arts  in our city, dance, theatre, and film; the necessity of increasing funding to Vancouver’s parks and recreation system, and the construction of new, or re-imagined, recreation centres, and increasing green space in our city; creating sustainable job growth to keep citizens living and working in our city; developing a model for citizen engagement to democratize decision-making in our city, giving people living in Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods a voice in the decision-making that will transform our city’s future.

Away from the toxic stew that Vancouver City Council became over the course of these past four years, not only has Colleen Hardwick grown, transformed, blossomed,  transcended, she has developed into a passionate and charismatic figure in our city, an undeniable force of nature, perhaps the person on Council most committed to reconciliation, and most committed to addressing the ills of a downtown eastside to serve the interests of those who live in the area, through a revival of Mayor Philip Owen’s Four Pillars Plan, which rather than a purely a law enforcement issue Ms. Hardwick believes is a public health issue that could be tackled through a combination of prevention, enforcement, treatment, and harm reduction.

Make no mistake, Councillor Colleen Hardwick is the only serious-minded Mayoral candidate in this Vancouver civic election dedicated to serving the interests of all Vancouver citizens, and not just the monied forces who are funding the campaigns of ABC (A Better City?), and Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together ‘toward a dystopian future’ Vancouver civic party of destruction.

#VanElxn2022 | One Month Until Voting Day | The Election is Over

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One month from today, voters go to the polls to elect a new civic administration in the City of Vancouver. Honestly, they oughta stay home.

Billionaire developers and wealthy millionaires have bought the 2022 Vancouver civic election, negating democracy, and the will of Vancouver’s citizens.

Bear with us while, as per usual, VanRamblings buries the lede.

This morning the Non-Partisan Association’s Mayoral candidate Fred Harding, incumbent NPA Councillor Melissa De Genova, and veteran Vision Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong —  along with twelve other 2022 Vancouver civic election candidates —  find themselves in Supreme Court responding to Vancouver Chief Election Officer Rosemary Hagiwaraha’s Court challenge seeking to declare that fifteen Vancouver candidates for office are not entitled to have their names on the ballot papers using Chinese, Persian or other non-Latin characters.

The 15 are Fred Harding, Elaine Allan, Honieh Barzegari, Cinnamon Bhayani, Iona Bonamis, Ken Charko, Melissa De Genova, Morning Lee, Tesicca Truong, Arezo Zarrabian, Rahul Aggarwal, Milan Kljajic, Suzie Mah, Allan Wong, and Dave Pasin.

Seven term Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong sought re-election in 2014 and 2018 without Chinese characters, but included Chinese characters in his September 7th nomination documents. Vision Vancouver council candidate Honieh Barzegari used a Farsi font on her form, while Forward Together council candidate Tesicca Truong expressed a desire to use both Chinese and Vietnamese beside her name on the ballot.

Ms. Mah, a COPE candidate running for School Board, submitted her nomination with her English name and her Chinese name, telling the Vancouver Sun’s Cheryl Chan that the Chief Election Officer’s court challenge “sends a disturbing message that only anglicized names are allowed on ballots.”

“I’m known by my Chinese name by my family, and any time I talk to the Asian press, and they want to translate my name into Chinese. I wouldn’t want to just have my English name in print,” said Mah, who added that there needs to be a clearer definition of “usual name” established.

The two Vision candidates said they were dismayed to learn their usual names are at risk of being removed from the ballot, while the NPA candidates accused Ms. Hagiwaraha’s application as tantamount to cultural appropriation.

The Court is expected to rule on the matter before the end of the week.

Meanwhile Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his Forward Together civic party seem to be in a bit of trouble, following on the retrieval of a two-page spreadsheet printout of a list of Forward Together donors and donations.

The editor of The George Straight, Charlie Smith, calls Mr. Woodvine’s retrieval of the Forward Together donors list an astonishing find, given that the document includes a list of “captains” in what appears to be a fundraising document. Beside each name are the 2022 donations, followed by the goal.

Mr. Smith writes that the “captains” represent a surfeit of influential, well-heeled and wealthy Vancouver developers and real-estate executives, such as:

  • Arnold Silber, president, Value Property Group ($4,000 donations, $25,000 goal);
  • Terry Hui, CEO, Concord Pacific, the real estate development company that oversees the development of the Expo lands ($8,200 donations, $31,250 goal);
  • Daisen Gee-Wing, senior vice president, Canadian Metropolitan Properties ($1,200 donations, $12,500 goal);
  • Jim Szabo, vice chairman capital markets, CBRE ($1,250 donations, $12,500 goal);
  • Joe Carreira, vice president development, Conwest Group of Companies ($1,765 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Jon Stovell, president and CEO, Reliance Properties Ltd. ($2,500 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Bob Rennie, founder, Rennie Marketing Systems ($12,500 donations, goal $12,500);
  • Francesco Aquilini, partner, Aquilini Investment Group, and owner of the Vancouver Canucks ($64,300 donations, goal $110,000);
  • Raymond Louie, chief operating officer, Coromandel Properties Ltd. ($2,500 donations, goal $25,000);
  • Stepan Vdovine, director, business development and corporate affairs, Amacon ($12,424 donations, goal $18,750);
  • Ian Gillespie, founder of Westbank Projects Corp. ($2,400 donations, goal $25,000);

… among a massive group of other monied Vancouver developers who appear set to donate to Forward Together;s campaign to the tune of millions of dollars.

As Mr. Smith wrote in The Straight at 2:41 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon …

Stewart’s party has not explicitly admitted that this spreadsheet was created by someone with Forward Together. But there is certainly circumstantial evidence. The name “Neil” shows up, as do the initials “NM”. Stewart’s chief of staff is Neil Monckton. There are also some names on the list with past associations with the NDP, which is a party that Stewart has represented in the past and which Monckton has worked very hard to elect. They include former B.C. NDP presidents Moe Sihota and Craig Keating.

Vancouver Sun columnist Daphne Brahman writes that Neil Monckton, who is Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Chief of Staff, collects an annual $126,366 salary. Mr. Monckton has been on unpaid leave from the position since September 10th.

VanRamblings is struck by the notion that, although under provincial election legislation brought in by former Attorney General David Eby in 2018 to limit political party donations to $1250 per individual, Stepan Vdovine — Executive Director of Vision Vancouver until the party’s defeat in 2018 — has donated $12,424, just shy of ten times the allowed amount, while real estate marketer extraordinaire Bob Rennie donated $12,500, exactly 10x the allowed amount.

British Columbia’s next Premier, David Eby, weighed in on the controversy …

“Fundraising will always be part of politics, but some people are clearly frustrated that the rich are no longer able to buy convenient access to politicians with private $10,000-a-plate dinners or six-figure donations. We’re not going back to the bad old days,” Eby told the Vancouver Sun’s Dan Fumano. “If I am elected leader, our government will continue to monitor and improve our campaign financing laws where necessary to ensure that all people, not just the rich, get their voices heard during and after elections.”

One imagines the matter of developer donors exceeding the allowed election donation amounts has likely been referred to Elections B.C. for investigation, as requested by rival Vancouver civic party TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver.

“Vancouver voters need to know the truth about this alleged fundraising list before they cast their ballots — it’s critical that Elections BC find out what has actually happened and clear the air,” TEAM for a Livable Vancouver campaign manager and Council candidate Bill Tieleman, told The Straight.

VanRamblings learned yesterday that a high profile Council candidate in the current Vancouver civic election called the employer of a person working on a rival party’s campaign, insisting to this person’s employer that she must be fired from her well-paid job immediately, for “interfering in the election campaign,” the victim of this despicable actl distraught, arising from the actions of a contemptible candidate for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

As VanRamblings has been writing for some weeks now, ABC (A Better City) has set its sights on purchasing the current civic election outright, having already spent millions of dollars, and ready to spend millions more — orders of magnitude larger than any other Vancouver civic campaign for office in 2022, at least four times Forward Together’s campaign budget, and as much as one hundred times the campaign budgets of rival parties, including the Green Party of Vancouver, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, Progress Vancouver, OneCity Vancouver, COPE Vancouver and Vote Socialist.

As we wrote above, the provincial NDP government brought in municipal election finance reform legislation in 2018, with strict campaign spending limits. As Dan Fumano reported in The Vancouver Sun on August 3rd, billionaire Lululemon founder Chip Wilson found a “work around” that would allow him to create a U.S.-style political action committees that — as the Witchita, Kansas-based billionaire Koch brothers have done for years, in the United States — would allow him, and other like-minded millionaires and billionaires, to funnel monies and finance “pro-business” politicians and political parties, all without breaching the tenets of British Columbia’s election finance reform legislation.

In 2021, Chip Wilson founded the Pacific Prosperity Network — a non-profit NGO — to work behind-the-scenes to finance right-leaning, free-enterprise municipal and provincial candidates, and “help” them get elected, to form government. In July of this year, Chip Wilson wrote a letter urging other wealthy people to contribute $50,000 to $200,000 each to PPN, saying he’d donated $380,000 to the cause (recently reported as a donation to ABC).

In Vancouver’s 2018 civic election, Mr. Wilson was a high-profile supporter of NPA Mayoral candidate Ken Sim. After narrowly losing to Mr. Stewart four years ago, Ken Sim is running again this year with the upstart ABC (A Better City). In an interview with ABC campaign manager Kareem Allam, Mr. Fumano was told …

“We appreciate Chip’s success as a businessman, but when it comes to politics, we’re not values-aligned. And he has no involvement on our campaign, other than those donations made a year ago.”

Yeah, sure, right. A $388,000 donation by Mr. Wilson to ABC (A Better City) — and, in Ken Sim, the party’s seemingly pliable and “co-operative” candidate for Mayor — is just peanuts,  and as Mr. Allam states above, Chip Wilson’s “values” are not aligned with ABC (A Better City), clearly the civic party of Wilson’s choice, with the preferred Mayoral candidate running for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.

Here’s the rub: ABC (A Better City) and ABC alone possesses the civic election budget that has allowed ABC to buy saturation radio and TV advertising deriding Mayor Stewart for his alleged — and as as VanRamblings wrote Tuesday, untrue — intention to legislate mobility pricing in Vancouver, that would charge citizens $15 to $65 dollars for vehicular travel within the city, when mobility pricing is a regional issue years away from implementation, if ever.

VanRamblings was apprised Wednesday, Ken Sim and ABC (A Better City) are polling in the low-to-mid 30s range, with Mayor Stewart’s flailing and failing Forward Together campaign mired at 25% and falling, with Colleen Hardwick’s TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver way back at 16%, with Fred Harding’s NPA at 8% and Mark Marissen’s Progress Vancouver campaign barely registering at 6%, leaving the Greens, OneCity Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, COPE, and Vote Socialist to divide up the remaining twelve to sixteen per cent of the vote.

Internal ABC polling — reports are that ABC’s polling firm is making contact with up to 2,000 probable Vancouver voters daily — give every indication of an ABC (A Better City) sweep at the polls on Election Night, October 15th, an inevitability, when the nascent civic party will elect Ken Sim as Vancouver’s next Mayor, and all seven ABC (A Better City)  City Council candidates for office.

The only question remaining open, then, is which two current candidates for office will form the official opposition on Vancouver City Council: the Greens’ Adriane Carr & Pete Fry; TEAM’s Bill Tieleman & Sean Nardi; Vote Socialist’s Sean Orr & COPE’s Breen Ouelette; Vision Vancouver’s take no guff Lesli Boldt, and Forward Together’s Dulcy Anderson; the NPA’s Melissa De Genova & Arezo Zarrabian; or, maybe, Progress Vancouver’s Morgane Oger will fill one of the two open slots on the next “give it all away to developers” City Council.

#VanElxn2022 | Candidates of Stature and Integrity Seeking Office

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This past weekend, a candidate for election to Vancouver City Council wrote to VanRamblings to enquire as to whether we’d be endorsing him/her?

We responded briefly, promising a more expansive reply at a later date. As is often the case with VanRamblings, the candidate enquiry has served to generate a column — a positive column (the kind we prefer to write) — amidst all the toxicity and shenanigans of the consequential 2022 Vancouver civic election.

Truth to tell, VanRamblings has many friends — about whom we care deeply — seeking to be elected to office on the evening of Saturday, October 15th.

Today, then, who VanRamblings would love to endorse, the very bright candidates of stature and integrity, the well-schooled and mature community activist candidates who would be difference makers for the better were they to be chosen by the voting public to sit around the Vancouver City Council “table” on the third floor of Vancouver City Hall, over the course of the next four years.


Clockwise: ABC candidates for office, Mike Klassen, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh

First up, VanRamblings’ very good friend of some 30 years now, Mike Klassen, long VanRamblings’ cherished webmaster — and in recent years a respected civic affairs columnist for the much-missed Vancouver Courier community newspaper. Michael (we call him Michael) is running with fellow ABC candidates Sarah Kirby-Yung — who, as we’ve written many times in the past, we believe to be a political superstar in our province — as well as newly-minted ABC candidates, Councillors Rebecca Bligh and Lisa Dominato, both of whom are seeking a second term on Council. Despite the hyperbolic VanRamblings’ rantings concerning the ABC campaign for civic office, we believe these four outstanding ABC candidates for Vancouver City Council mean much good for our city, and in a better, fairer and less partisan world, we’d endorse all four of these superb candidates in a New York minute.

As for those who’ve been wondering what’s up with what we’ve been writing about ABC campaign head honcho and funder, Peter Armstrong — VanRamblings possesses deep caring and affection for Peter (not a popular position in these too partisan times), and always will, despite what we’ve been writing about the Rocky Mountaineer railroader, or will write in future days.


Clockwise: NPA candidates Melissa De Genova, Ken Charko, Arezo Zarrabian and Cinnamon Bhayani

Truth to tell, VanRamblings has long respected and admired Vancouver City Councillor Melissa De Genova, dating back to the days when she was first elected to Vancouver Park Board, in 2011. Melissa is far more progressive than she’s given credit for — and apart from those on the left who snipe at her (when that occurs, Melissa gives as good, or better, than she gets). Not for no reason did Melissa De Genova come in a solid third place in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. Then, there’s Ken Charko, who VanRamblings has known and liked since 1996, when he first purchased the lease for The Dunbar Theatre. Hardly a day has gone by this election season when Ken hasn’t given us a call at home — heck, we signed his nomination papers this past weekend! Cinammon Bhayani knocked our socks off when we met her at the NPA’s campaign launch at the Italian Cultural Centre. And, Arezo Zarrabian has emerged as one of our favourite candidates in #vanelxn2022 — we can’t wait for you to meet her on the campaign trail at an all-candidates meeting. Believe us when we write that you’re going to come away from meeting Arezo Zarrabian mightily impressed, and ready to cast a ballot for her at the advance polls that’ll occur early next month, or on election day, Saturday, October 15th.


Clockwise: TEAM’s Sean Nardi, Cleta Brown, Grace Quan, Stephen Roberts, Bill Tieleman & Param Nijjar

Over the course of the past couple of months, VanRamblings has gotten to know all six of the mature, capable and ready to govern TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver candidates for Vancouver City Council. Sean Nardi — with his recent MBA from Simon Fraser University and his years of community activism, has emerged for us as one of this election cycle’s star candidates, and a must-elect to Vancouver City Council, next month.

VanRamblings has long respected and admired Bill Tieleman, and has stuck by him through thick and thin, as he has for us during our various travails over the years — talk about a star TEAM candidate for Vancouver City Council, that’d be our friend and neighbour, Bill Tieleman. Stephen Roberts, with his sly grin, suggests he knows something we don’t — VanRamblings figures that, given Stephen’s finance background, is how to resolve the inflationary budget mess at Vancouver City Hall, preserving and expanding core services to Vancouver’s beleaguered citizenry, while reining in non-essential spending.

Cleta Brown is another TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver star candidate, and another must-elect to Vancouver City Council just a bit more than four weeks from now. Grace Quan is the energizer bunny of the 2022 campaign to gain a seat at City Hall, sequestered within Council chambers, and ready to govern on behalf of all  Vancouver’s diverse citizenry who call Grandview-Woodland, Fairview, Riley Park-Little Mountain, the West End, Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Kerrisdale, Marpole, Strathcona / Chinatown and the DTES — and each and every one of us who live in one of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods — home. Param Nijjar is another standout, serious-minded TEAM candidate for Vancouver City Council, who impressed our socks off in his expansive interview with The Georgia Straight’s Carlito Pablo.

Adriane Carr, the doyenne of Vancouver civic politics, and 11-year member of Vancouver City Council

Last Thursday, when we wrote about the Green Party of Vancouver campaign launch, and enthused about Councillors Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, and new and impressive Green Party candidates for office, Stephanie Smith and Devyani Singh, we somehow overlooked acknowledging Vancouver City Council’s longest serving and most able Councillor, VanRamblings’ much-admired Adriane Carr. For VanRamblings, it is unthinkable that Adriane Carr would not be re-elected to Council for a fourth productive term in office. More than any other Councillor in our memory, Adriane Carr has had a more profound impact in shaping who we are — as we believe is the case with many among us — in demanding always that we be better, holding us to account when we’ve been less than our best self, and causing us to be more humane, and … if we might suggest such, wise. VanRamblings’ affection and deep, deep respect and admiration for Adriane Carr knows no bounds.

Clockwise: Dulcy Anderson, Breen Ouellette, Jean Swanson, Sean Orr, Morgane Oger, and Lesli Boldt

One of VanRamblings’ very favourite candidates in 2022 is Dulcy Anderson, who is running with Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together civic party. VanRamblings has gotten to know Dulcy over the years, in her capacity as Vancouver Point Grey MLA David Eby’s very able senior constituency assistant. Colour us mightily impressed. Dulcy Anderson on Vancouver City Council — let’s make it happen! Sean Orr, who is Vancouver’s standout Vote Socialist difference maker candidate in the 2022 Vancouver municipal election is another one of VanRamblings’ favourites — rent control and demoviction legislation, free transit (c’mon, it happens elsewhere), electoral reform, and a focus on arts, music and culture, Sean Orr is who you’re gonna want to cast a vote for in #vanelxn2022.

COPE’s Breen Ouellette and Jean Swanson are two more must-elects. We came to know Breen during his run for Parliament, as the NDP candidate in the 2021 federal election, to represent the riding of Vancouver Centre. Knowledgeable about city governance? — your darn tootin’ he is. A lawyer, a dad and committed to working with senior levels of government to end the egregious homelessness crisis that has for too long plagued our community, then Breen Ouellette is your guy — a man you should definitely set aside a vote for when casting your ballot in the 2022 Vancouver civic election. VanRamblings has long admired Vision Vancouver candidate for City Council, Lesli Boldt, for her work as an environmental activist, and her outstanding work with Boldt Communications Inc., a Vancouver-based communications firm she founded in 2001, for her great work as a podcaster, and for her tough, no nonsense approach to life. If there’s one “takes no guff” candidate in the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, that would be Lesli Boldt.

The fact of the matter is, with 10 spots to be filled on Vancouver City Council, with 60 candidates for Vancouver City Council seeking office, and 21 superb candidates VanRamblings has identified above — who we believe would be the difference makers on Council — candidates that we’re all but endorsing. Given all of that, here’s what we’ve decided to do: as was the case in 2018, VanRamblings will publish three Vancouver City Council endorsement lists.

Towards the end of  the week of October 3rd, VanRamblings will publish a ballot endorsing 10 women, or women identifying, candidates for City Council. The next day, we will publish a “druthers” endorsement list: if VanRamblings could choose those candidates we feel would make the most difference for our city going forward, candidates of intellect, élan and no little knowledge of civic politics and policy administration, the ballot VanRamblings will publish that second day will represent who we would druther, all things being equal, see elected to Council, were it not the most consequential election in 50 years.

In the final week before Election Day, Saturday, October 15th, on Wednesday, October 12th, VanRamblings will publish our official endorsement list of candidates for Vancouver City Council who are seeking office as Councillors in 2022.