#VanElxn2022 | A Quick, Neighbourly Précis of Vancouver’s Civic Election

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

Over the weekend, at the request of a neighbour — who was out doing some gardening at the front of our home —  VanRamblings engaged in a conversation about the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, who the Mayoral candidates are, and what the various municipal parties offering candidates for office aspire to as they seek to take residence at Vancouver City Hall post election day, Saturday, October 15th.

VanRamblings apprised our cherished, hard working neighbour, as follows …

Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and his Forward Together municipal party. Now, here’s a Mayor who spent more time this past term in office meeting with and acquiescing to real estate developers in our town than he did working on behalf of those who (barely) elected him to office in 2018. What does Forward Together stand for? Build, build and build more 40 storey towers everywhere, on every block, more towers than you can imagine, almost all of which will be sold offshore, as speculative ventures rather than homes, and which units in these towers will remain unoccupied long, long into the future. Mayor Kennedy = the politics of greed run rampant, a Mayor absolutely not on your side.

“Hmmm,” my neighbour said, “that doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it doesn’t,” VanRamblings responded. “But there’s worse than Mayor Kennedy Stewart, and his Forward Together party — who are now running 6 candidates for Council! With provincial election legislation kicking in Thursday, September 15th restricting campaign spending, in the last 10 days in adding Alvin Singh, Tessica Truong and the Mayor’s wife, Jeanette Ashe, to Forward Together’s campaign slate, each new candidate allows the expenditure of an additional $220,000 apiece in overall campaign spending = $1.32 million for ads, social media, billboards and radio and TV advertising in the four week lead-up to election day.”

“One more point: the OneCity Vancouver and Vision Vancouver civic parties are brothers and sisters in arms of Forward Together, in this election. A vote for candidates running with any of these three civic political parties is a vote for another term of a feckless Kennedy Stewart as Vancouver’s Mayor.”

“Now, where was I? Oh yes. There’s worse than Mayor Kennedy Stewart and Forward Together in the 2022 Vancouver civic election.”

ABC (A Better City). In a greater rush to destroy our city than any other municipal party with candidates running for office in the 2022 Vancouver civic election —  with paper candidate / unprincipled ABC front man / dumb as a door knob (about civic politics) Ken Sim, as ABC’s Mayoral candidate —  the powers behind ABC (that would be multi-millionaire Rocky Mountaineer owner / businessman Peter Armstrong,  and multi-billionaire Lululemon founder Chip Wilson) — won’t be giving the city away to developers, as say, Forward Together intends. Nope. ABC will be the developer, both Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Wilson fancying themselves as future billionaire Vancouver real estate developers, who intend to rescind the Empty Homes Tax, should they gain a majority on Council, and demand the provincial government —  be it an NDP, or a provincial Liberal government over in Victoria —  rescind their Empty Homes Tax, prepared to call out the duly elected MLAs and Cabinet members as “racists” for not allowing a multi-billion dollar influx of foreign capital to pour into the construction of more towers than you could possibly imagine —  can you say the word expropriation? We knew you could —  displacing Vancouver residents all in the name of greed.

A vote for ABC (A Better City?) Mayoral candidate Ken Sim would mean that you hate yourself, you hate your children and grandchildren, you hate your family, your neighbours and your colleagues, their children and their children’s children, and that you not only don’t care about our city, you actually hate our city. A vote for ABC = a death wish for what we’ve known and come to love as … Vancouver.

“Surely, there’s got to be someone out there with their head screwed on straight,” averred our neighbour. “Someone who has the best interests of the city at heart, for you, for me, for our families. Tell me that’s so, Raymond.”

L-R Stephen Roberts, Grace Quan, Param Nijjar, Colleen Hardwick, Bill Tieleman, Cleta Brown, Sean Nardi

TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver. Although not perfect —  VanRamblings wants to see meat-on-the-bone policies —  in 2022, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver is the only game in town, the only Vancouver civic party for which you can cast your ballot in good conscience. Not only is TEAM Mayoral candidate Colleen Hardwick the single most caring, educated and principled candidate among the five Mayoral candidates seeking office in Vancouver in 2022, she’s … now steady yourself … a democrat. Yes, that’s right: unlike every other candidate running for office with all the other Vancouver civic parties in 2022, Councillor Colleen Hardwick, and her six TEAM candidates for Vancouver City Council, would pause the completely unnecessary paean to real estate developers —  the Broadway Plan and the Vancouver Plan —  with a TEAM civic administration plan that would commence a multi-neighbourhood re-drafting of community plans for Vancouver’s 23 diverse neighbourhoods that would ensure densification in each neighbourhood, as necessary, while incorporating schools, parks, small business, green space and plazas, recreation centres and other community amenities into those community plans.


Arbutus Walk, a human-scale, gentle density Kitsilano development at 12th and Arbutus

If you care about the city of Vancouver at all, if you love your children, and hold your family, your neighbours and your colleagues in high regard, and want the best for them, TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver, and TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver alone has the Mayoral candidate, in Colleen Hardwick, and the Council candidate slate for which you can, in good conscience, cast your ballot at the advance polls early next month, or on the autumn election day of Saturday, October 15th.

Only TEAM for a Livable Vancouver will work to preserve neighbourhood integrity.

Above: graphic representations of the Broadway Plan, passed by Vancouver City Council

Now for the also-ran Vancouver Mayoral candidates I told my neighbour about.

Mark Marissen and Progress Vancouver. Running a pretty much carbon copy Forward Together / Vision Vancouver / OneCity Vancouver campaign for office, as much as VanRamblings likes Mark Marissen, and at least one of his Council candidates running for office, Mark Marissen has as much chance of becoming Vancouver’s next Mayor as you, your post person, or VanRamblings does. A knowledgeable and respected politico with a good heart, Mark Marissen has mounted a virtually invisible campaign for the Mayor’s office. In 2018, the Vancouver civic party he created, Yes Vancouver, secured 9,924 votes and 5.73%  of the vote —  which we’re pretty much expecting will be the case in 2022, as well.

Fred Harding, and the Non-Partisan Association. Fred Harding, who operates a business out of Mainland China, and whose wife wife Zhang Mi is a popular, well-known singer across Asia, was parachuted into the position of the NPA’s 2022 Mayoral candidate — after both Colleen Hardwick and Mark Marissen refused the NPA’s entreaties, following NPA Mayoral candidate John Coupar’s unseemly ejection as the NPA’s Mayoral candidate. A personable fellow, who presents well, given the trials and tribulations of the Non-Partisan Association campaign for office in 2022 —  hardly aided by the American-style dirty tricks campaign Peter Armstrong and ABC are running against the NPA, whose voters list Peter Armstrong stole before setting about to form ABC as his “new” Vancouver civic party — the NPA would seem to in deep trouble in 2022, and may be hard-pressed to elect anyone to office.

Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

See author's posts