On Wednesday evening, the Residents for Community Control held the first City Council all-candidates forum of the 2018 Vancouver civic election.
Two hundred hardy souls came in out of the rain to listen to and question City Council candidates from most of Vancouver’s civic parties.
We write most, because two of Vancouver’s mainstream municipal parties were unrepresented at Wednesday night’s forum: the Vision Vancouver ruling party, despite a half dozen pleading contacts with representatives of Vancouver’s governing party — who failed to respond to any of the organizer’s entreaties, for any one of their half dozen Council candidates — and OneCity Vancouver, who apologized to organizers (and attendees) for their non-attendance, as OneCity Vancouver candidates Christine Boyle and Brandon Yan — two of the must-elects in the current civic election — found themselves at the well-attended SFU Harbour Centre Broadbent Institute-sponsored Bringing Racial Justice to Local Democracy forum.
The Green Party of Vancouver was well-represented, with three of their serious-minded candidates for Council in attendance: incumbent Adriane Carr, Michael Wiebe and must-elect Pete Fry. The Vancouver Non-Partisan Association’s Colleen Hardwick and must-elect Sarah Kirby-Yung did their party proud, as did must-elect COPE Council candidate, Anne Roberts.
Otherwise, the also-ran right-wing parties were in attendance: Jesse Johl for Vancouver First; Raza Mirza for Pro Vancouver; James Lin for Coalition Vancouver — but, as it happened, no Council rep from Yes Vancouver.
The questions that you might expect to come up were featured front and centre: affordable housing, those damnable bike lanes (alas), development and which parties were in the developers’ pockets, parks and recreation and adequate funding for public facilities, the Downtown Eastside (but not homelessness), reining in City Hall’s budget or at least prioritizing expenditures differently than has been the case with Vision Vancouver, and the need for a new city plan for each of Vancouver’s 23 neighbourhoods.
In 2014, the Mount Pleasant Council all-candidates forum, held at Heritage Hall at 15th and Main, was the most raucous and engaged all-candidate debate of the entire 2014 Vancouver election season. In stark contrast, Wednesday night’s well-attended City Council all-candidates forum was muted in comparison: too many representatives from too many civic parties, with too many utterly unknown Council candidates participating, with only one City Council incumbent in attendance — the Green Party’s beloved communicator and City Councillor extraordinaire, Adriane Carr.
By forum’s end four things were clear: forum attendees possessed a universal visceral hatred for Vision Vancouver; the Green Party in all its humility, good cheer, humanity and intelligence is absolutely and utterly beloved, at least by those in attendance and more probably by a broad spectrum of potential Vancouver votes; the Green Party’s Pete Fry and the NPA’s Sarah Kirby-Yung — two of the must-elects in this election — were by far the best speakers of the evening, the best informed with a broad grasp of the issues, and the most well-received of all the candidates at the front of the room (the Greens’ Adriane Carr & Michael Wiebe arrived a bit late — important civic business, given that both are current electeds in civic governance — and chose to remain as a part of the audience); and voters are hankering for change, and not more of the same old, same old.
Looking like the cat that ate the canary, independent Mayoral aspirant Kennedy Stewart on Wednesday morning — despite VanRamblings formally endorsing independent Shauna Sylvester for Mayor — was formally endorsed by the members and the Board of OneCity Vancouver as their ‘certain-to-be-elected‘ (they feel), and ‘someone they want to work with and have confidence in’, Mayoral candidate of choice.
For the record, OneCity Vancouver is, by far, VanRamblings’ favourite feminist, woman-driven civic party, the only party with a consistent & well-thought-out political analysis in the 2018 Vancouver municipal election. Now, we’re not saying that we don’t think Shauna Sylvester wouldn’t make a first-rate Mayor for Vancouver — we believe that with all our heart, and to the depth of our being — rather, we’re saying that Alison Atkinson, Anna Chudnovksy, Cara Ng, Kyla Epstein, Mia Edbrooke, Marcy Toms, Adi Pick, Claudia Ferris, Helesia Luke, Abby Leung, Joey Hartman, Sharon Yandle, Thea Dowler, Jennifer Reddy, Carrie Bercic, Erica Jaaf, Christine Boyle and a host of other change-making, action-oriented, difference-maker women of conscience may, just may mind you (and, most likely do), know more than that VanRamblings fella who writes these posts on this blog, and that in choosing Kennedy Stewart as OneCity Vancouver’s Mayoralty candidate of choice, these fine women are smart political cookies, and probably (okay, certainly) much smarter than the writer of this blog.
And wouldn’t you know, no sooner do the good folks involved with OneCity Vancouver formally endorse Kennedy Stewart as their Mayoralty candidate of choice, than the Vancouver Sun publishes a story that reads …
Independent candidate Kennedy Stewart is pulling ahead in the race for Vancouver’s top job after Ian Campbell’s departure, according to the latest poll.
The Research Co. found that 36 per cent of respondents say they will vote for Stewart in next month’s election, up 11 points since the company’s last poll in July. The poll shows Stewart with an 11-point lead over the NPA’s Ken Sim, who is in second place at 25 per cent.
Among female voters, Stewart holds a 23-point lead over Sim, while Sim is slightly ahead of Stewart (32 per cent to 29 per cent) among decided male voters. Sim is followed by independent candidate Shauna Sylvester with 17 per cent, Hector Bremner of Yes Vancouver at seven per cent, and David Chen of ProVancouver with four per cent support.
Word on the street is that Kennedy Stewart was unwilling to give up his cushy $168,000-a-year job as a Member of Parliament, unless he could secure both the support of labour, and the provincial NDP.
And since OneCity Vancouver is pretty much the civic farm team for the provincial NDP — again, for the record, as a life long member of the New Democratic Party, VanRamblings loves the provincial NDP, and just about every galldarn, cotton pickin’ one of the party’s provincial and federal members — so OneCity Vancouver‘s affiliation, affection and support for the New Democratic Party is just darn fine by us.
We’re sure that the terrifically intelligent folks in OneCity Vancouver are well-aware that every Union local in Vancouver, and every one of the 50,000+ Union members who reside in the city of Vancouver and call our paradise by the sea home, are working their buns off volunteering for Kennedy Stewart, and the candidates endorsed by the Vancouver & District Labour Council (hey, we’re also a life long Union member and an anarcho-syndicalist, so the support of labour for political candidates of conscience, that’s just fine — more than fine, if we’re being truthful — by us, too).
And we’re pretty darn sure that folks associated with every one of the New Democratic Party Vancouver constituencies are working overtime volunteering — on their own time, on their own dime — for Kennedy Stewart (well, at least the ones that are not over-the-moon for Shauna Sylvester, among which number VanRamblings must count ourself) and all the VDLC-endorsed candidates for OneCity Vancouver, the Green Party of Vancouver and the Coalition of Progressive Electors, and a few of the Vision Vancouver candidates, too. It’s a party — a party of the socially conscious.
If the OneCity Vancouver must-elect candidates, each one of whom VanRamblings is head-over-heels in love with — Brandon Yan and Christine Boyle for City Council, and Carrie Bercic, Erica Jaaf and and the downright spectacular Jennifer Reddy for School Board — can ride into office on Kennedy Stewart’s coattails, well that seems like a pretty darn good thing.
Just wait til Christine, Brandon, Erica, Carrie and Jennifer are all elected to office come the evening of Saturday, October 20th — you’ll become as smitten with each one of them as everyone who knows them has, and is.
Imagine. Being in love with the people you’ve elected.
Elect OneCity Vancouver’s Christine Boyle, Brandon Yan, Erica Jaaf, Carrie Bercic & Jennifer Reddy, and that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to you!
And, finally, for today’s VanRamblings post, first this … for the folks who are anxious to get to the advance polls to cast their progressively-minded Council ballot of conscience for the transcendently lovely Christine Boyle, Brandon Yan, Anne Roberts, Jean Swanson, Derrick O’Keefe, Pete Fry, Michael Wiebe, Adriane Carr, Catherine Evans and Heather Deal, and their School Board ballot of conscience for Erica Jaaf, Carrie Bercic, Jennifer Reddy, Erin Arnold, Aaron Leung, the extraordinary Allan Wong, Diana Day and Barb Parrot and Janet Fraser, and their all-important Park Board ballot of conscience for Stuart Mackinnon, Gwen Giesbrecht, John Irwin, Camil Dumont, Dave Demers, Shamin Shivji and Cameron Zubko …
And then this, where VanRamblings hopes to see you tonight (we’re going to try to remember to bring along our tripod, which’ll make for less shaky video … and yes, we’ll be the annoying guy “filming”) …
