From top left: COPE School Board candidate Diana Day, Vision Vancouver Council candidate Diego Cardona and OneCity Council candidate Judy Graves, Green Party school board candidates Dr. Judy Zaichkowsky, Estrellita Gonzalez and Janet Fraser, bottom left, independent (who has been endorsed by COPE) Council candidate Jean Swanson, and in the next frame OneCity school board candidates Carrie Bercic and Erica Jaaf (both of whom deserve your vote), with NPA candidate for Council Hector Bremner below them, bottom right, Vancouver Green Party candidate for Council, Pete Fry.
From l – r, the Vision Vancouver school board candidate team (standing with Mayor Gregor Robertson, pictured in the middle): Mike Lombardi, newcomer to electoral politics Theodora Lamb, Joy Alexander, Allan Wong and Ken Clement, each one of whom deserve your vote on October 14th.
On October 14th, Vancouver residents go to the polls in a city by-election to vote for a City Council candidate to replace Geoff Meggs, who resigned his seat on Council to become Premier John Horgan’s Chief of Staff.
In addition, voters will be given the opportunity to elect nine trustees to the Vancouver School Board (VSB), the former members of which were fired by the BC Liberal government last October 17th, allegedly for failing to pass a budget for the school year — which wrongheaded Liberal government decision was more about morbid, corrupt and anti-democratic politics as practiced by the Christy Clark government of the day, and much less to do with any sort of wrongdoing on the part of the then VSB school trustees.
Today, VanRamblings will offer a cursory look at the candidates for Vancouver City Council, with reflective commentary on their prospects.
In the main, the fight for a seat on Vancouver City Council is in its essence a three-way fight between Vancouver Non-Partisan Association candidate Hector Bremner, a former executive assistant to current interim provincial Liberal party leader Rich Coleman; Pete Fry, a veteran community activist and the Jane Jacobs-like ‘slow growth’, neighbourhood-centred ‘city building’ Vancouver Green Party candidate, whose ascension to Council would provide the current Green Party member of Council, Adriane Carr, a needed seconder for the motions she places before Vancouver City Council; and in a neck-and neck race for the vacant Council seat, Order of Canada recipient Jean Swanson, the principled candidate of substantive and meaningful change whose clarion voice we very much need on Council.
Longtime homeless advocate Judy Graves is the OneCity candidate for the vacant Council seat, while 21-year-old Diego Cardona was appointed as the Vision Vancouver candidate to challenge for the current vacant seat on Council. Although both Ms. Graves and Mr. Cardona are fine people, truth to tell there’s a scathing and vicious takedown / whisper campaign (about which we may or not write about another day) that is being waged against both Ms. Graves and Mr. Cardona that makes it all but impossible for either candidate to secure enough of the ‘up for grabs’ vote for either candidate to be considered serious contenders for vacant Council seat. Alas …
As Charlie Smith recently wrote in the Georgia Straight, Vancouver Non-Partisan candidate for Council Hector Bremner (pictured above) is the candidate to beat in the upcoming October 14th by-election vote. Why?
Well, in addition to what Charlie has written, Mr. Bremner (or as he’s more popularly known among his NPA confrères, the ‘parachute candidate’) has the full weight of the provincial Liberal party behind him (from October 2014 to December 2015, Mr. Bremner was Executive Assistant to provincial Liberal minister and current interim party leader Rich Coleman, responsible for natural gas development).
Now, Mr. Bremner’s LinkedIn profile reports that Mr. Bremner was also responsible for housing (Mr. Coleman was the housing minister in the previous government), but sources tells VanRamblings that simply isn’t the case and Mr. Bremner was focused solely on the LNG file.
According to other sources within the NPA, in support of Mr. Bremner the provincial Liberals have supplied to the NPA their entire list of ‘marks’ (Vancouver-based provincial Liberal supporters), which data when combined with the NPA ‘marks’ from the 2014 Vancouver municipal election (people who put up signs, donated monies, volunteered and otherwise indicated strong support for the NPA) provides Mr. Bremner with a reliable list of strong NPA supporters on which his campaign might laser focus their resources and attention, each vote from whom Mr. Bremner intends to get out to either the advance polls, or on voting day, October 14th.
And in their class interest (which is to say, not yours and my interests) those supporters are numerous, well-heeled and actually get out to vote.
That the core NPA / provincial Liberal vote resides in Kerrisdale, Shaughnessy, West Point Grey, Dunbar and Yaletown — in which neighbourhoods there was up to a 74% turnout of voters, with up to 74% of the vote going to the NPA in 2014 in these neighbourhoods — whereas in areas like Grandview-Woodlands the turnout was only 20% of eligible voters, with only 13% of the vote going to the NPA (Vision Vancouver secured 67.9% of the vote in this eastside neighbourhood) — means that the NPA has pretty much written off voters in 18 of Vancouver’s 24 neighbourhoods as they mount their 2017 by-election campaign, although they will dedicate resources to polling ‘stations’ in the 18 neighbourhoods across the city where they did well in 2014’s Vancouver municipal election.
As Tyler Michaels, by-election campaign manager for OneCity reminded VanRamblings last evening, historically only 33% of residents voting in a general municipal election turn out to vote in a by-election (a record 43.4% of eligible voters in Vancouver turned out to the polls in 2014), which means that all parties putting candidates forward in the 2017 Vancouver by-election expect only a 14% turnout at the polls on October 14th.
Hector Bremner and the NPA are focusing solely on their key constituent neighbourhoods, where they expect an up to 25% turnout, as opposed to 7% – 17% in all other Vancouver neighbourhoods. In 2017, prospects for an electoral victory are a numbers game, and sad to say success augurs well for the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, the BC Liberal farm team.
The Green Party of Vancouver’s Pete Fry has the highest profile of any of the candidates vying for a seat on Council in the 2017 by-election. As a provincial Green Party by-election candidate in February 2016 and a 2014 Vancouver municipal Green Party candidate, Pete Fry is a known quantity, and a popular and well-respected Vancouver politico, with broad support in neighbourhoods across the city, as well as the only ‘city building’ candidate: green-friendly low-form development in neighbourhoods, green-friendly at-grade transit development, and as Pete has written about his core issues …
“housing affordability, income disparity, the Downtown Eastside, homelessness, communities under threat, red tape and a de-spirited micro-managed City Hall staff, short term rentals, bogus planning processes — and of course, that soft spot for corruption: the overt financial influence that the real estate industry has over the two big developer parties that run our city, and a commitment to a fairer and more equitable city where all Vancouver citizens might thrive.”
Green Party Councillor Adriane Carr needs a seconder for her motions on Council; Pete is that seconder. Pete is a great communicator of untold resonance and empathy, and as a lifelong grassroots community organizer has committed to responding to the calls and correspondence from every constituent who contacts his office (as COPE Councillor Tim Louis did for years), has committed to working with the vibrant and responsive Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods (with representation from all 23 neighbourhoods in Vancouver), while working with community centre, neighbourhood, resident and advocacy associations that span the breadth of our too often beleaguered pacific paradise by the tranquil ocean.
The secret to Pete’s success? You. Vote for Pete Fry on October 14th.
To paraphrase late U.S. senator Ted Kennedy in his eulogy for his brother Bobby, “Some women see things as they are and say why? Jean Swanson dreams things that never were and says why not?” Or as Hillary Clinton averred in her 1971 commencement address at Wellesley, “Some see politics as the art of the possible. I see politics as the art of achieving the impossible. And those are the things I very much intend to get done.”
With broad support from progressive peoples across our city, Jean Swanson’s is the candidacy that could spark real and palpable change for the vast majority of citizens who reside in Vancouver, with a platform that promises that …
Early in her term, as a newly elected Councillor to Vancouver City Council, Jean Swanson will submit a motion to Council to …
- Officially adopt the position that Vancouver City Council will work to ensure the implementation of a 0% rent increase for tenants over the next four years, while working with the new NDP government to ensure that rent freeze legislation will be introduced during the 2018 sitting of the BC legislature, ensuring that such legislation would prevent landlords from circumventing the Rent Freeze;
- Grant renovation permits to landlords only if they demonstrate that any tenants forced to vacate will be provided the opportunity to return at previous rents;
- Ensure that the city start immediate production of 2,138 units of modular housing on city owned lots, housing that would be available to singles, families and couples as temporary housing pending provincial construction of new co-operative and resident-managed social housing;
- Hold a city-wide door-to-door voter registration for the 2018 city election, ensuring that renters, indigenous people and other racialized groups, as well as permanent residents, can vote in the next municipal election;
- Reduce the police budget by 2%, turning the $5 million savings over to investment in community services that promote social justice;
- Work towards implementation of a $5 a month transit pass for low-income Vancouver residents, similar to the programme successfully implemented by Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi;
- Acknowledge that ‘No One is Illegal’ by expanding and enhancing Vancouver’s designation as a Sanctuary City by implementing city policies that would ensure that VPD officers do not report Vancouver citizens to immigration and Border Services.
You know, there was a time in the not-so-distant past when COPE City Councillor Harry Rankin was the top vote-getter, election in and election out, year after year and for decades, with his COPE cohorts Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen and and Bruce Yorke finding themselves not only being re-elected term after term after term, but emerging as the most popular councillors at City Hall, with broad support in every neighbourhood across the city, especially in Dunbar, Point Grey and Kerrisdale, in times that were less partisan and less mean, and where each and every resident in Vancouver cared about the welfare of all citizens, and recognized theirs and our collective responsibility to care for the most vulnerable among us.
Jean Swanson’s independent candidacy for Vancouver City Council is a return to the future, harkening back to a simpler and a better time, and in 2017 for all persons of conscience Jean Swanson is the only candidate for the vacant seat on Council who represents a truly revolutionary change that would mean a fairer and more just society for all, sooner rather than later.
Jean Swanson’s is the compelling voice of change that you want and need to hear on Vancouver City Council. Vote for Jean Swanson October 14th.
