“Done Voting for 2008″, I Hope

I went off to the advance poll for the November 15 municipal election here in Vancouver today. It was necessary, as I’ll be three time zones east of here on election day, and although much of the information about municipal politics comes out at the last minute I did my research and made my choices.

There was a fair-sized crowd using the advance poll set up for my part of the city this morning, and in talking to the returning officer on site they’d had a continuous flow since opening at 8.00 am. It’s gratifying to see a little enthusiasm for civic affairs, especially considering how “electioned-out” many of us in this city are feeling: a federal by-election, two provincial by-elections, a federal general election, now the municipal election, plus the campaigning for next spring’s provincial election already starting up and the spill-over, in the news, of the American elections … just exactly how many ads and signs are we expected to process, especially in this decade of “negative campaigning” as a first-strike option?

But here in Vancouver we have a number of excellent positive choices on the ballot, as opposed to the usual round of ho-hum-oh-well candidates — and, it seems, fewer diversionary candidates. Even the ones running for notoriety seem to be taking a serious look at affairs this time around, for which I’m thankful.

In the race for the Mayor’s chair, we’re blessed with two sensible and viable candidates in the NPA’s Peter Ladner and Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson. Either Gregor or Peter should make a fine mayor; while I’d like my choice to win the day (don’t we all want our candidates to be the winners?) I will be happy with his opponent as well. Indeed, I spent a good two minutes in the voting booth going back and forth between the two one last time before finally inking the page. I devoutly wish I am faced with this same problem at all future ballots I am asked to cast.

I will say nothing much about the candidates for City Council, the School Board or the Parks Board. (For those not from around here, Vancouver has no wards, so all candidates are elected city-wide: the top ten vote getters for Councillor, for instance, become the new Council — and our Parks and Recreation system has an elected set of “trustees” much as does the Vancouver School Board. Then, too, we have party politics in Vancouver, so we’ll have voters who vote a near-straight party ticket [the parties don't always run a full slate of candidates].) We had good people offering their services for all of them, scattered around the NPA, Vision and COPE — plus a smattering of candidates from other parties and a number of independents. What I will say is that every vote I cast was a positive one, in that it was cast for the candidate (not the party) and on that candidate’s merits.

Ideally, we will wake up on the morning of Nov. 16 and discover that the Mayor must face a “minority” council — one where they must find support from Councillors who are members of other parties — rather than our last few councils, where party discipline could create sheep-like votes. It would be good for Vancouver to need to do some coalition-building around the issues.

The three referenda on spending were the most interesting part of the ballot. Municipalities in Canada have very limited revenue potentials and are generally left to plead for pennies from senior levels of government, yet it is in municipalities that our future lies, not in larger national or provincial entities. In this city, despite the fact that we are already burdening businesses and property owners with too much of a take relative to other communities’ options, we really do need to invest in our ageing community centres, in our ageing water/sewer/transport infrastructure and in our community housing. (We also need to invest in more regional transportation options, but that’s at another level of government.) No, the numbers don’t add up, but the Council must have some freedom to act, and that’s the referenda questions that were asked: do you approve our taking action without further consultation. I said “yes” to all three — and let’s hope a divided Council, Parks Board and School Board, in turn, will intelligently reach courses of action that all sides of the debate, from NPA through Vision to COPE, can approve of. It would be the beginning of a civic infrastructure that could handle the demands of the 2010s.

So I shall enjoy the rest of the candidates’ campaign, even having voted. But I do feel good about this one. A little residual “Obama hope”? No — some real hope that maybe, just maybe, we’re maturing as a community. 2009-2011 will tell me whether my hopes are real — or misplaced.

A Rock in the Mayoral Race in Vancouver

The NPA mayoral candidate, Peter Ladner, tossed a large rock in the middle of the mayoral race this week, by stating one of those things that political correctness (and fear of backlash) leads almost everyone to never say.

His message? (No doubt it’ll be referred to a Human Rights Commission as a hate crime by some idiot.) “The Downtown Eastside needs to become a mixed income community — simply building new housing for the homeless and poor won’t fix it.”

For those who don’t know Vancouver, the DTES is Canada’s collection of poorest urban postal codes. It is filled with the addicted, the homeless, the poor, and the indigent as well. It is a community, not merely a colleciton of derelicts — but it is seldom more than a photo op or an afterthought for anyone in politics.

Now, Ladner has spoken a truth which I have personally experienced. In the mid-1980s, in Toronto, I lived on Toronto’s closest equivalent to the DTES. This area was under going some measure of gentrification — I lived in a heritage brownstone which had been renovated for market-priced flats — but the area also contained many overnight shelters, assistance areas, much prostitution and drug-dealing, and many rundown properties and what some would call “slum lord” conversions into single-room occupancy flats.

In other words, it was (and is: it is recognizably the same in 2008) very similar to the DTES.

What saved this area of Toronto, ultimately, was the mixed income element. I recall “the man” — I never learned his name, as he wasn’t talkative, but he trudged, winter and summer, up and down Shuter Street with his worldly possessions in a plastic grocery store bag and wearing his great coat — who saw this as a community. Working from home one day, I heard a ladder bang up against the brownstone next door. A cable TV truck was on the street. I spotted “the man” watching carefully, then moving at what was (for him) a brisk pace to the payphone on the corner. Shortly the police arrived — and arrested the burglars masquerading as cable TV staff. He knew his neighbours, and cared for them, even if he didn’t want particularly to engage with them directly.

Ladner’s point is simply this: it is the mixing of “classes” that makes the difference.

Interestingly enough, this was part of the original design of Vancouver, with its mid-block lanes. The poor lived in over-carriage house or over-garage apartments; the wealthier lived facing the street. Outgoing Mayor Sam Sullivan’s EcoDensity plan also called for a return to this mixed structure. Jane Jacobs noted the value of mixed neighbourhoods in her seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Need I go on?

By saying the unsayable, Ladner had actually made it possible to discuss a real issue, something that almost never happens in a political campaign. Good for him!

I don’t know whether this will turn back Gregor Robertson’s apparent lead in November, nor am I myself even sure if Ladner should be given a vote based on one moment. (He has quite a bit to answer for as an NPA councillor who voted with Sullivan in the outgoing council. I still remember the civic strike of 2007 — and fourteen weeks of garbage in my garage.) But I do know this has made him more worth consideration.

May a little honesty, plain speaking and dealing in issues emerge more often, in more situations. We all, as citizens, deserve it.

After all, if it did happen regularly, maybe more of us would go out and vote.

Municipals 2008 in Vancouver

There’s still a few forlorn — whether for the winner last Tuesday or one of the also-rans, it matters not — election signs left around our neighbourhood, but, with the municipal vote coming fast on November 15, I came home on the weekend to see a raft of “vote for…” signs for the mayor’s chair, the city council, the school board and the parks board.

For those of you not in Vancouver, a couple of pointers to keep in mind: first, we have party politics (municipal parties) dominating municipal elections; second, everyone is elected on a city-wide basis (there are no wards). As a result, this weekend’s growing signage is a reasonable proxy for how well the party-led campaigns (there are no shortage of independent candidacies as well) are getting off the mark.

From that point of view, Vision Vancouver — the new(ish) party — has their act together.

The neighbourhood, notorious for its reflexive voting for any NPA (the party that has controlled Vancouver politics for most of the last seven decades) candidate, is nevertheless full of signs for the Vision Vancouver mayoral candidate, Gregor Robertson, as well as Vision candidates for other offices. I saw only one candidate for city council for the NPA who as yet had supporters taking lawn signs. COPE (the left side party) and the NPA were conspicuous by their absence.

Now, it’s early days yet — if I was running a campaign, I’d have waited until after the Federal show was out of the way, too — and perhaps when I make it home this weekend the sign balance will have changed. (I’m also expecting to see billboards and bus shelter ads in place.) Still, this ought not to have been a surprise to anyone, and I am surprised that more candidates, and the parties, are so slow off the mark.

There’s been indications that this year could be Vision’s year to shine: it will be interesting to see if the sign imbalance continues, especially in my west side neighbourhood, an NPA stronghold.

Intermixed with this is a by-election to replace Gregor Robertson in Vancouver-Fairview, where he had been the MLA prior to stepping down to run for mayor. Some of those signs were actually up prior to the Federal vote. The governing party in BC has always styled itself as the “BC Liberals” to distinguish itself from the Federal ones; this time around the provincial NDP candidates are also styling themselves as “BC NDP”. A smart move, I think, given that the by-election has to contend with the Federal vote and the municipal one, and one I expect to see carry over into next year’s general election.

As for the content of the municipal race, I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I like to see reasonable alternations of power, and in addition there are good reasons in the Vision platform for me to vote for Vision to control the civic apparatus next session. (I also like a council and boards with multiple voices on them, and thus intend to support candidates from all the parties.) But I have also always liked Peter Ladner (the NPA mayoral candidate, and the man who managed to wrest the nomination away from Sam Sullivan, the current mayor). We may have party politics in Vancouver, but the vote (at least for me) is anything but reflexive, and I suspect I will be weighing the options right up until I walk into the polling station in mid-November.

In any event, it does wash the taste of our recent Seinfeldian Federal exercise out of my mouth.