Vancouver Yawns, Blames Gregor Next

What a pathetic turnout for the municipal election on November 15! When more than 75% vote “none of the above” by staying home, it’s really time to ask why this is happening. Could it be that everyone, after years of Olympic boosterism overriding any sanity in decision-making (and dealing with the Cambie Street Canyon and other long-term construction sites while the bills pile up and up) figures it doesn’t matter any more who’s in charge? Perilously close to they don’t give a flying fuck on a rolling doughnut for us, so “why should I care?”.

I voted — in the advance poll, even, knowing I would be away from the west coast on election day. One of the factors that had guided my support for various candidates was a firm desire to “reward” the prior NPA council under Mayor Sam Sullivan for the civic workers’ strike of 2007. Corners of my garage still carry a whiff of odeur des ordures despite repeated airings, but that’s what a fourteen week buildup of waste can do for you. The NPA members had supported Sam in his “no debate, no discussion; the public has no business meddling in the strike” attitude. (Vision Vancouver and COPE members on that council had been willing to air the dirty situation in a council debate.)

So former NPA councillors did not get my vote (except for Peter Ladner, who was competing for Mayor). Returning Vision and COPE councillors did. I then voted for some new NPA candidates along with one more Vision one. Similarly, on the Parks and School Boards, I voted for a mix across all the civic parties. Party politics at the municipal level is a plague brought on by our wardless civic structure — candidates need the “brand” to back their campaign efforts — but councils and boards ought to operate in a “non-partisan” manner and work together. Alas, the corrosion of faction, as it was called by George Washington in the early days of the United States, is alive and well: institutions diverge from, and corrode, the tradition they support.

I’m not dissatisfied that Gregor Robertson won over Peter Ladner: it was a hard choice as to which to support as I like both and think either would make a good mayor. Having voted for a council balanced toward the Vision/COPE stream, I ultimately decided an NPA mayor would be a good way to achieve non-partisanship. Anything to put the “us-vs-them” of the Sam years behind us!

But Gregor has been dealt a cruel hand, for the mistakes of the Philip Owen, Larry Campbell and Sam Sullivan mayoralties (at the very least) are about to come crashing down on him and his council. Needless to say, of course, the cupboard is bare thanks to the idiocy of putting the Olympics first, last and always, and needing to bail out shady developers (Millennium) and hedge/private investment funds (Fortress) in the process as the most recent on a pile of “you’re stuck with it” in the city.

Municipalities are the new backbone of the twenty-first century. Large-scale governments — nations and provinces/states — will find it increasingly hard to exercise authority. More and more issues will fall to cities whether they want them or not. At the same time, they are not even really a “level of” government: they exist at the pleasure of (and under the thumb of) the province. Eventually this will change: in the meantime, everyone will scream as the wholly-inadequate funding base of the city is strained beyond hope.

Now, on the one level, you could (as did CKNW commentator Bruce Allen) opine that “if you don’t vote, you’ve got no right to complain after the fact”, but that misses the point. Who are your municipal candidates? Parties formulate their candidates’ lists weeks before the election, and their policies likewise. (Note that Suzanne Anton of the NPA is the lone survivor from last council’s NPA members: she expended campaign resources with a barrage of radio advertising just before voting day. It probably built just enough name recognition — coupled with appearing in the top three names in the ballot thanks to alphabetical order — to squeak her home.) There is some logic in not voting for nobodies — and that’s who most of these are to most voters. They are just a party label. Why not? — it’s that way provincially and federally, too, although the ballot is generally much shorter.

So the complaints will come — and they ought to. But what needs to change is the system:

We need wards: Local voting areas — wards — mean that an elector is faced (as they are with their other ballots) with a much shorter list of candidates. These candidates, in turn, need not campaign all over the city to win election. We might actually get to know who’s running. (A good local candidate would also be a viable contender to be elected as an independent, too.) Meanwhile, region-blanketing advertising (Anton’s radio adverts reached six times as many people who couldn’t vote for her as could) would be less cost-effective, removing that point of influence.

We need new methods of civic financing: It’s time to move past the property tax as the essence of civic funding. The answers here are difficult: American cities have tried city income taxes, city sales taxes, etc. All of these come with serious problems, but they all recognize that cities do more today than pave roads, put in water/sewer lines, and run police/fire departments. (Some cities, like Toronto, have taken on far more than they should — and some have experienced the distortions of provincial downloading without funding [Toronto again, for one].) This will, in turn, lead us to …

Cities must become a true level of government: Cities must become the equal to provinces and the federal government, with a division of powers and true fiscal authority. As we move more deeply into the end of cheap energy (and don’t let the recent price declines fool you; the long-term trend is to constrained supply and more expensive extraction and refining) life will become more local. Land use patterns, transit patterns, local employment: all of these are civic in nature, best decided locally.

So, I wish our new council well. I know the noise level will be high. They will try to patch the mess left by the past and that will lead to new screaming. We’ll end up blaming them for failing. But until the game itself is changed, that’s all we’ll be able to do. No wonder people don’t care to vote!

“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.

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.

Do For Yourself – A Vision Worth Exploring

The Red Tory in me knows that there are times and places for Government to be the institution that mobilises resources for a large-scale common good. Most Government programmes, however, do not pass this test: they are simple transfers of wealth from the majority of us to a minority of us. These must go! — for choices will increasingly need to be made.

If there is one thing that the Chrétien, Martin and now Harper years have demonstrated, it is a singular lack of vision. Give Trudeau and Mulroney their due: both were fixated on what the business world calls “big hairy audacious goals”. Whether we have benefitted as a nation by these obsessions is not the subject for today. Both of these former Prime Ministers wanted to accomplish their goals; they subordinated much else to these (which means there is no shortage of real criticism possible for their years in power), and ultimately both finished as permanently unelectable despite their legions of adoring fans who to this day gladly defend them. (Proof of the assertion that Trudeau and Mulroney had visionary goals and drove toward them is that Clark, Turner and Campbell simply disappear from view, as those in the shadows often do.)

Chrétien (I must be in a charitable mood today) ran a government driven by reacting to events. The deficit and accumulated debt hit the point of unsustainability? Oh, well, I guess we’ll do something about it. Québec came within 0.5% of a referendum result to chart a course toward independence? Oh, well, I guess we’ll do something about it. So it went with Chrétien: a long list of promises, seldom kept, and a pattern of letting events unfold. His years in office were ultimately about le p’tit gars being in office.

Martin, too, suffered from “I’m here because I’m here” syndrome, typified by his penchant for everything being a top priority (and therefore nothing other than surviving at the top of the dung hill for another day was a priority). When he asked us, in his last election battle, to “Choose Your Canada”, we did. We wanted one with some sense of vision and purpose.

Alas, despite a good start — and a decent track record of “things done” — the Harper Government has also failed dismally to articulate a vision and a reason for its existence, beyond “it’s not the other guys”. I tend to support the Conservative Government, but not reflexively: I do believe we need (as a nation) to regenerate the Liberal Party after years of neglect and mismanagement under Trudeau, Turner, Chrétien, Martin and Dion. They must seriously rethink their purpose. Policy must be more than a book of line items: where is the overarching vision? What elements of our past must we now move away from; which should be the centrepiece of what is brought forward? None of this is being done; until it is, my view as an elector is “anyone but a Liberal”. Enough of tactics and expediency!

That, of course, is the message I would give Mr. Harper, too. “Enough of tactics and expediency!” I would, for instance, have hoped for a healthy dose of fiscal conservativism, grounded in the notion that tax monies are our monies, not “the Government’s”, and should be minimised to return them to their rightful owners. As with, for instance, the whole day care plan issue: “here’s money; you decide how best to use it” rather than “here’s your program and you’ll learn to love it”. (Even better, of course, would be “we’re cutting taxes here so that you can decide if day care is one of your priorities” — no money in, no cheque out — but it will take a very long time to wean Canadian lips from the teat of the State.)

We haven’t had a vision. We’ve had one tactical manoeuvre after another, designed to appeal to this or that, or to get a credit with some small voting bloc for this or that, but we haven’t had a vision.

Within the Conservative Party, of course, there are those with a vision. Some of these have visions I do not support; indeed, actively oppose. That’s all right, because national political parties capable of reaching Government must, of necessity, be big tents: there will be no shortage of people with whom to disagree, even abhor, from time to time. The question is “is this a side note to a vision of the party tout court, or is it what passes for the party’s vision in the absence of having laid one out”? Harper’s Government is perilously close to having its minority views substitute for a vision due to the lack of one.

Despite having had my dalliances over the years with other alternatives — and I do think that if the NDP were to get the stick out and acquire a real vision it might do well enough to actually contend for government rather than for “Best Opposer, 20xx” — I come back to my conservative roots and thus the Conservative Party in its various incarnations over the years because, often, their tactics in the absence of vision are closer to my own views than others. The lack of vision, however, rots this at its core. Expedient actions and tactical manoeuvres don’t add up to anything other than “return me to office” — and in the meantime burden Canada with yet more reasons not to get up off its collective ass, turn the idiot box off, and fend for itself.

We’re going to have to learn again how to do that. Big Government, big programmes, massive transfers are all creations of cheap energy. Cheap energy is going, going, gone, never to return. With its passing into history, the “big structures” it created: massive corporations, national-scale unions, and huge government bureaucracies, are all going to find themselves also headed toward the rubbish tip of history.

A Canadian Conservative Government of vision would be starting to position us for exactly that. It would dismantle programmes of little merit. It would transition us out of them in the way that the pending debacle of “national day care” would have immobilised the country’s wealth and future growth was transitioned away from: most people are much happier with their cheque than with a programme. Then a tax cut can clean up the cheques. Putting resources where they belong — generally as close to the coalface of decision-making as possible — is a sound application of the principle of subsidiarity.

So, too, getting out of the way of the provinces: our provinces should be laboratories for public policy. They ought not only to reflect local conditions and local affordability, they ought to be able to experiment with “what is enough” and “how to do this” in their own domains.

In the meantime, there are elements of national infrastructure in need of repair. A dependence upon road traffic must come to an end: we must invest in alternatives. A mass investment programme of that nature — to be done in a short period of time — is a proper use of government (and then you get out of the business as the economics of operation start to change).

A vision of a sustainable Canada whose prosperity is not based on incessant “growth” obtained by strip-mining the world’s affordable resources could very well be a vision for 21st century Conservativism. But it won’t happen if the Conservative Party doesn’t stop mucking about with tactical voting bloc slicing and marginal riding dicing and instead lay out an integrated vision.

Right now no party offers that sort of visionary umbrella and a set of integrated policy proposals to put meat on the vision’s bones. A free prediction: those that do so first will benefit greatly at the polls (and electoral turnout will jump upwards at that election).

You would change Canada so Canadians stop whingeing and waiting for “Government to do something”? You would make us a centre-right nation rather than a centre-left nation? Where’s the vision to rally the country around?

We are who we are because a string of leftist leaders did exactly that. One of them — Pearson — even did so through two minority governments, and “scandals” far more invasive to his agenda than anything being raised in Ottawa today. All it took was vision, and the courage to stake everything on selling that vision.

Do you have what it takes, Mr. Harper?