As per Vancouver Courier civic affairs reporter Mike Howell’s May 25th story, VanRamblings was told yesterday by informed sources that Hector Bremner — current sitting City Councillor with the Vancouver Non-Partisan Association, who recently had his NPA mayoral nomination bid rejected by the party — will hold a press conference tomorrow morning, June 4th, informing the public that he is leaving the NPA to form a new civic party, to be called YesVancouver, for which he will be the party’s Mayoral candidate.
Let’s Fix Housing for the rich, with nary a thought to building social or affordable housing
As per Howell’s story, disgruntled NPA members Adrian Crook, Wade Grant and Scott de Lange Boom, who all intended to seek council nominations with the NPA, are expected to join Bremner. Reports are, as well, that Bremner’s new YesVancouver civic party will run a full slate of candidates for both Vancouver School Board, and Park Board — the star candidate for the latter civic body expected to be disaffected former NPA Park Board member Erin Shum, and current independent Park Board Commissioner.
All of the above comes as bad news for the Vancouver’s oldest and most established civic party, the Non-Partisan Association, who are holding their Mayoral nomination vote today at the Hellenic Hall, in the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood. The NPA and YesVancouver — both of them corporate parties, arms of the right-of-centre B.C. Liberal party, and largely developer-funded — look to knock each other out heading into the autumn civic election, voting day Saturday, October 20th, with former Vancouver South Conservative MP Wai Young looking to land a knockout blow to both the NPA and YesVancouver, for the right-of-centre conservative crown.
Ain’t politics luvverly in our town?
To make matters worse for the once beloved and still loved by many Non-Partisan Association, sources tell VanRamblings that current NPA members who will vote at today’s Non-Partisan Association mayoral nomination shindig, and who will officially join the nascent civic YesVancouver party tomorrow morning, plan on disrupting the announcement of the NPA’s 2018 mayoral candidate when the announcement is made by NPA President Gregory Baker, in full view of the gathered NPA party members, and more egregiously the media assembled at the Hellenic Hall to report out on the — let’s hope not booby prize — winner of the NPA 2018 mayoral nomination.
Left-of-centre political pundits and party members with the so-called “progressive parties” offering candidates in the 2018 Vancouver civic election — OneCity Vancouver, the Green Party of Vancouver, the Coalition of Progressive Electors, Vision Vancouver, and Team Jean — might set to thinking “Whoopee, the election is ours!“, but, nope, hold on a galldarn minute there, the progressive coalition seems, too, to have ridden off the rails spelling electoral disaster for the left-of-centre progressive parties who seem to be in just as much disarray as the right-of-centre evil-doers, with Vision Vancouver set to go it alone, as would appear to be the case with the Greens, all of which blows the notion of a progressive coalition to fight the evil-doers of Vancouver’s right-of-centre parties to smithereens and back.
Alas and woe is all of us, particularly bewildered civic voters of Vancouver who are set to cast a ballot at the polls this autumn civic election season.
Good thing then, one supposes, that 95% of Vancouver’s voting public could give a good galldarn about all the political shenanigans afoot this civic election season — more focused on going to the pub, falling in love (oh, the spring’s good for that), getting set for the start of the Vancouver Canadians 2018 baseball season, or focused on the Stanley Cup playoffs (yeah Ovechkin! — it’s your year … finally), or just setting about to live their lives, unconscious and socially bereft lives mind you, but lives nonetheless.
Happier times for newly-elected NPA Vancouver City Councillor Hector Bremner at a 2017 civic by-election celebration. The NPA Councillor’s mayoral hopes were dashed when the NPA Board rejected his candidacy in early May. But he seems to be landing on his feet. Photo by Dan Toulgoet, for the Vancouver Courier. Used without permission.
Maybe it is as former much-beloved Vancouver Sun civic affairs columnist Allan Fotheringham wrote each early summer for years — and as our friend Mike Klassen also wrote recently in his regular and often poignant and astute Vancouver Courier civic affairs column — summer is the silly season in politics, it’s just arriving quite a bit earlier than usual this unsettling year.
