That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around for bringing it back further entrenched my concern with the lengths they would go to disenfranchise human beings further.

So I was very happy to see that a modicum of democracy was able to steer a BC legislative committee stacked with provincial neoliberals–a modicum, supported by intense organizing efforts. Though I wouldn’t put it past this government to implement the municipal corporate vote despite the committee report. Remember the impending HST?

In looking at the details of the committee’s report [Report of the Local Government Elections Task Force (PDF 638KB)], I was thrilled to see a few things.

• 6,039 petition signatures for the corporate vote submitted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business

I can’t be surprised they built a petition. I am happy to see they could only find 6,039 future corporate voters and their lackeys in the whole province of 4.2 million people to sign it.

• 2,354 member Facebook page against the corporate vote

Sure, it’s easy to build a Facebook group to push for something. But really it’s a huge effort to build a group and promote it to get this many people signing up in a short period of time. Not every movement can have the nation-wide hatred of abused prorogation behind it.

• 71% of the 920 written submissions commented on the corporate vote, with campaign finance being the topic of next greatest interest.  Many submissions touched on a wide range of other election‐related topics – from alternative voting systems to the date of the vote to elected officials’ accountability. The following identifies the general trends in those 920 written submissions:

1. Corporate vote – total: 223 for; 428 against
2. Local governments:  8 for; 23 against
3. Organizations:  11 for; 29 against
4. Individuals:  204 for; 376 against

I was especially thrilled to see an almost 2:1 ratio of submissions opposing the corporate vote to supporting it, with almost 3/4 of all submissions addressing it.

The following highlight a number of positive recommendations. Not to say that they aren’t controversial in themselves, but the fact that the elements and structure of our democracy are on the table is encouraging. I wonder if whichever of these changes come into force before the next municipal election will have an effect on what the public tolerates in other levels of government.

The report makes 31 recommendations for improvements to local elections to: ensure accountability; enhance transparency; strengthen compliance and enforcement; increase accessibility; and expand education and advice.

Key recommendations include:

* Establish expense limits for all campaign participants (e.g. electors, elector organizations and third party advertisers)

* Regulate third party advertisers, requiring them to register and disclose expenses and contributions

* Ban anonymous contributions

* Require sponsorship information on all election advertising

* Shorten the time for filing campaign finance disclosure statements to 90 days post election

* Establish a central role for Elections BC in enforcement of campaign finance rules and in making campaign finance disclosure statements electronically accessible

* Establish a separate Act for campaign finance rules in local elections

The Task Force recommends a four-year term of office to provide local governments more time to plan and implement their vision, and to reduce the potential for voter fatigue over time. It also recommends no general contribution limits, given proposed expense limits and the need to ensure that all affected by local government decisions can participate in local elections discourse

While it also recommends no corporate vote, the Task Force does recommend that UBCM, the Province and business groups work together to recognize the concerns expressed to the Task Force and to encourage effective local ways to engage with business, further strong relationships and foster a competitive business climate.

via Local Government Elections Task Force – Terms of Reference.

• June 4, 2010 -- Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun? (0)
• May 18, 2010 -- Pettiness: the Defining Quality of Politicians? (3)
• June 21, 2009 -- Ignore My Copyrights (0)
• April 27, 2009 -- No More Strategic Voting: Thanks STV! (0)

Despite their radical socialist leanings and connections to labour, Vision so far has tried to play ball with Campbell’s B.C. Liberals.

via 24 Hours Vancouver.

I honestly can’t think of one radical socialist Vision politician.

And then there’s this:

VSB Chair Patti Bacchus dismissed an independent review of Vancouver’s board of education that describes them as incompetent and overtly political.

The entire review was politicized to the teeth. Independent is bunk.

And how Rich Coleman connects to those other areas of relations between Vancouver and the BC Liberals would only make sense if Coleman were premier.

Otherwise, this piece is a good example of how the BC Liberals don’t play well with others. And don’t really care.

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via City of Vancouver Homelessness Solutions Survey.

In a time where Vancouver city council may or  may not have the will to oppose a provincial government they seem to be cozying up with, they issue a survey to see what the citizens think of addressing homelessness and the Howe Shelter.

Even if they do the wrong thing with this, asking for our input is better than an NPA council will do.

Even if the province ignores it all, this is a survey to take part in, especially if you live downtown!

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The BC NDP entered an existential crisis 6 days ago. This election loss, a voter turnout shamefully below 50%, the loss of meaningful electoral reform: all these things were preventable with some vision and observing how the world is broken today and what new ideas are required to fix it.

The NDP missed all that and we’ll all suffer for it. And while there are a myriad of reasons to explain the loss, here are some key issues.

Why the NDP was a viable party for government

I read the policy book. There was solid work in there. And I know most citizens would never read it, but many of its highlights made it into the campaign, though without the earned media the Liberals knew they’d enjoy.

I’ve watched Carole James grow as an effective speaker, debater and government critic in question period for over 5 years, particularly in the leaders debate. The knives haven’t come out yet and they may not.

We laid out sound arguments as to why Gordon Campbell is destroying the social, economic and political fabric of the province, its most vulnerable, its reasonably vulnerable and–let’s face it–the poorest 95% of the province.

The public had the opportunity to toss the government out in favour of a hopeful replacement.

Where the NDP failed

The economy

The NDP, though, while marginally mentioning the lousy economy in the last 2 quarters did not want to pin anything on the Liberals because talking about the economy meant letting the Liberals punch the notion that the NDP can’t manage the economy. The NDP didn’t go into how Gordon Campbell’s neoliberalism has caused the global recession we are in. The NDP didn’t spend the last 8 years trotting out the data of both a marginal and significant budget surplus in its last 2 budgets before Campbell took over.

The party may not actually have solid economic advice, though at times I see signs of it. There is no shortage of capable economists and political economists in the party and the country who are progressive. Does the party hear them? Do their suggestions carry weight? If so, why won’t/can’t the party promote this vision of an economy that serves people and not global capital? Is the party really economically progressive or just blandly centrist? Members who aren’t bland centrists are tired of a party that isn’t at the forefront of re-framing a local, provincial and global economy.

Policy opportunism

The Liberals’ carbon tax was awful. It was designed to be matched with income tax cuts, which is sound green economics, but only at the start. Thus, it will become a regressive tax. That made the carbon tax part of Campbell’s cynical, greenwashing PR stunting designed to let him shake hands with Al Gore and the Terminator. It inadequately deals with rural British Columbians without access to the transportation alternatives I have in Vancouver. And it is woefully inadequate to stop the threat of climate change.

The NDP opposed it because it polled well to oppose it. While some of the above arguments had some play, their profile was never high enough.

Policy opportunism is all about committing to something that will wedge you above the government. It isn’t about doing what is right. Right would be to look at the massive interventions in our society we need to do to remove carbon from our energy paradigm. Or else. Even Al Gore is calling for the USA to be off carbon in just over 9 years, not just a little down on carbon.

The right approach for the NDP would be to take the lead in starting a dialogue in creating a 21st century green economy. That didn’t happen. I fear that would be too radical. When the Arctic ice melts a few summers from now, all notions of “too radical” will be moot.

It also didn’t happen because the party chose to support doing anything to the Port Mann Bridge for no reason except to keep or gain seats in Surrey with people who want to commute by car into Vancouver. There appeared to be no other reasons.

It also didn’t happen because the party chose to support the Gateway project for some reason. Trying to make global capital like the NDP? Maybe. Pandering to construction unions? Perhaps, but there are greener infrastructure projects than that. And global capital will never support the NDP, no matter how much they leap towards some “middle.” As it is, global capital is struggling with its own problems: the perfect storm of a neoliberal recession, and imminent peak oil and massive climate crises since we aren’t doing everything we can in the last 5-10 years we have left to stop our rapacious economic model from irrevocably maiming our ecosystem.

The NDP’s relationship with media

The NDP paid only token attention to non-traditional media, let alone engaging with citizens. Leaking its platform to CanWest/Global–as if they would ever not endorse Campbell after being his PR department for 8 years, and sinking reams of cash into TV ad buys sadly reflect 20th century large-campaign style sub-contracted politicking. Sub-contracted politicking is all about using mass media to get the message out.

It’s dead. Get on with it. Politics must be about actual people.

Vision Vancouver signed up thousands of new members 12 months ago when the party didn’t even have an identity, solid policy or governing experience because they engaged with people at Skytrain stations and all over with the offer of something new in city politics and a posture of being responsive to people, actual human beings. This was them embracing the Obama bump.

Obama as president has a database of 3 million people he can mobilize on 12 hours notice–all from his human-centred mobilization efforts.

The BC NDP bought 30 second TV ads and expected the party vibe to trickle down to the masses. It didn’t put cash, people and resources into helping members meet citizens who are almost all suffering from Campbell, listen to what they need, then let them know we care about them. The party ignored the citizens of BC on their doorsteps perhaps as much as right wing parties do. Why should they turnout to vote for us?

Throwing STV under the bus

The NDP committed to following the wishes of the electorate in the STV referendum. Many elements of the party, however, were actively and passively trying to destroy electoral reform. Most majority governments in this decade and into the future have not enjoyed and will not enjoy the legitimacy of 50% of the popular vote. If the Green Party supported STV in 2005, they’d likely have seats in the legislature right now.

Voter turnout dropped below 50% last week. Four days of advanced polling did not signify a resurgence in voting, suggesting that change is rolling, but rather people merely organizing their voting time more efficiently. For voter turnout to roll into the shame zone and for STV not to pass is paradoxical. I would think dissatisfaction would lead to a movement to change the electoral system.

Instead Gordon Campbell’s carnage has destroyed hope in anything better, in the NDP as a viable alternative, and in the possibility of civil politics in Victoria. So apathy reigns and it always favours the incumbent.

We now know that electoral reform is a massive, revolutionary act. Its near-success in 2005 can now be explained by people not yet having had a chance to become scared of change.

The NDP’s lack of support for STV was a choice to risk certain suffering under 4+ more years of Gordon Campbell for the hope of earning a majority government now or in 2013 to rule as all majority governments do: without real opposition. Supporting the STV, even though it isn’t the best proportional representation system, means moving away from our horrible first-past-the-post system. It means recognizing that neither of two parties in BC do not–cannot–represent even 50% of the population.

The era of legitimate majority governments is over, federally and provincially. Holding out for more is not only illegitimate, it is also so 20th century.

But there were certainly other factors outside the NDP that helped them lose.

The lie of attack ads

The NPA, the Non-Partisan Association party of conservative voters in Vancouver, is all about not being formally linked to other “partisan” political parties, unlike leftist civic parties. From this lie of lacking bias they hope to gain votes from people looking for that mythical beast: the neutral politician. Similarly, the Republicans in the USA and the Liberals in BC have succeeded in convincing people of the lie of attack ads.

It goes like this: if a party criticizes someone else’s policies or facts of governing, it’s an attack ad. This is garbage, but it has stuck, to the point where people, including Liberal supporters on Facebook, have been calling on the NDP to stop criticizing the Liberals’ policies and results, and offer constructive suggestions for improvement. More garbage. It is irrational to not assess a track record in deciding who to vote for.

Not that there weren’t attack ads in this campaign. The drunk driving premier and other politicians/operatives with criminal charges and driving problems were fair game. And it seems the attack ad rhetoric has play since a solid minority [at least] of British Columbians are fine with twice re-electing a premier convicted of drunk driving.

Maybe that’s a very 21st century thing. Maybe NDP Premier Mike Harcourt [who is now a functional shill for the Liberals] shouldn’t have stepped down over Bingogate in the 1990s.

CanWest/Global

I was hoping CanWest/Global would go bankrupt 4 months ago. Their stock closed last Friday at 36 cents, down from $15 four years ago. They are going to stop publishing the perennially profit-phobic National Post on Mondays “for a short time” which will likely convert to forever, and now Victoria’s Times-Colonist will lose its existence on Mondays. I still have this gut feeling that the redundant daily CanWest paper in Vancouver [whichever one that is] will close soon, now that the election is over and the Canucks are golfing. People have finally started using the Internet more than newspapers in the USA. Canadian figures are likely similar. Combine that with the global neoliberal recession and we see carnage in print media.

Sadly for us, and the democracy that a free press is supposed to encourage, CanWest/Global still exists. It is impossible to imagine how Gordon Campbell could have been re-elected in 2005 if real journalism were allowed in BC. So CanWest/Global certainly get some credit for keeping the NDP from winning the election last week.

The future of the BC NDP

I joined the NDP 2 years ago. I have been an ardent supporter since Ian Waddell was my MP in Coquitlam 20 years ago. I finally joined because waiting for the party to perfect itself finally seemed futile. So I joined to see if I could help.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but there is a long way to go. And I’m not ready to give up on the party after 2 decades until I know it is beyond hope. I will be, however, much closer to abandoning the party as hopeless if the elements that are keeping it stuck in the 20th century are still around in a while.

I spent hours last Tuesday night at the Burnaby Hilton’s NDP party talking to people expressing profound grief and serious irritation at all manner of things. Mostly, people were angry with decisions the party made before and during this campaign. Armchair quarterbacks are legion, but this kind of angst was existential, despite it coming hours after a key election loss.

People want to roll up their sleeves to make sure our party reflects what we need it to. If it cannot enter the 21st century, it will perish with the Socreds, the federal Progressive Conservatives, and the federal Reform/Conservative Party, whose arc is in decline and at the mercy of the federal Liberals’ fundraising health and internal polling.

I’m tired of the rhetoric that we are going to hold the government to account as a strong opposition. The carnage coming from Gordon Campbell over the next 4 years will ignore democratic debate as it has for the last 8 years.

If we cannot remake the party very soon, while it is early in opposition, so that we can show a new face that actually involves citizens and their real and pressing needs, we will have nothing to offer in the next election.

I’ve watched my new MP Don Davies hold a handful of public meetings since being elected just over 6 months ago. It’s effective, open, a tonic for politically cynical citizens and not brain surgery to organize. It’s one model for what it means to talk to people about what they care about and are afraid of, and to hear where they want to feel hope.

And since the NDP has to convince people it can manage the economy, we need to do that by telling people how we’ll make it work for them, not by buying ads on CanWest/Global media and hoping people will give us the benefit of the doubt. We have sound economic policy. It can be improved and our ability to let people know it exists must be a high priority. We simply can’t be afraid of the Liberal rhetoric that we’re bad on the economy, or we’ve already lost the next election too.

In the end, the BC NDP will now take stock of itself, look honestly at the electoral context of 21st century BC and decide it can operate in our actual time. If it can’t do all of that people will leave en masse, especially young people. I guarantee it.

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“The Olympics are prime time advertising and the city might be offering it to Vanoc at the regular market rate,” the Richmond mayor said.

“But all of this has been discussed at closed meetings, so I really can’t go into the details.

“The details will be released soon, perhaps within the month.”

via Mayor questions Vanoc ad deal.

We now have some new insight into the visual ad pollution of billboards in Vancouver, courtesy of Richmond’s mayor Malcolm Brodie.

Not only has VANOC acquired access to all the billboard space in the Olympics universe for its official sponsors, the deals they’ve made for rates are part of closed municipal meetings.

This is no surprise since VANOC, much like a vampire, does nothing in broad daylight. Don’t hold your breath on anything related to VANOC being released ever.

A couple months ago, Vision Vancouver cynically killed municipal plans to take down the billboard pollution around the city that contravenes rules about how far away from homes they are supposed to be. With 2 billboards within 60m of my living room window, I’m eager to see them gone–and their repulsive car and horror movie ads that have caused more than a few neighbourhood children turn away in fear.

But as Charlie Smith featured weeks ago, Vision Vancouver voted to drift those plans into a bureaucratic purgatory.

Smith noted how Vision’s Geoff Meggs is connected to Glen Clark who is connected to Jim Pattison whose name is on many of the polluting billboards. Connecting the dots allows us to see a rather transparent motive and example of what Vision Vancouver’s vision actually is.

But Richmond’s Mayor Brodie has now also reminded us that these are not ordinary times. The Olympics gold rush means we CANNOT risk taking down even one billboard, despite how heinously it may contravene muncipal by-laws.

We see the VANOC vision again appearing as our masters.

This is very bad news for Vision Vancouver. As a new party, with little stable ideological roots and now only months of governing history, its identity is still in the fetal stage.

Its membership swelled with the Obama bump. It had dozens of prospective candidates vying for nominations, many of whom were very progressive, but some were temporarily out of the NPA.

They’ve had policy meetings, but those mean little until they get a chance to actually enact policy through governing. And now we’re seeing what they are like: Jimmy Pattison, billboards, VANOC.

And like many new political parties or movements, their membership will dip when renewal time comes. But for Vision, their membership will plunge as people realize that the amorphous hint of progressiveness they robed themselves in ends up lacking anything solid.

A political party walks its walk. If it talks a different line, people who pay attention to the walk will see the gap and act accordingly.

Real progressives currently in Vision will have to make a decision very soon about whether their vision of Vision is shared by the ones in charge. If not, they’ll have to move on.

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This doesn’t really prove that the NPA is dead. Corporate donations will keep the NPA or some future clone alive forever, regardless of the fact that the 4 NPAs elected will likely never cast a meaningful vote in the next 3 years. This is good because I’m quite tired of Ken Denike. But that’s another story. Ask me over a beer at the Public Lounge some time. Even if Kennedy Stewart were right and they were totally wiped off all councils, they’d still be back, strong as ever with their corporate cash.

Here are some of the stories that made for today’s COPE/Vision/Green win, in their order of significance:

Populism!

North American politics are populist right now. Obama, the rise in the federal NDP, the federal Liberals’ inability to raise more funds from more people than the federal NDP, and the mobilization of people rejecting apathy to join Vision Vancouver–all these show that citizens matter. The NPA is like the federal Conservatives and Liberals: complacent, corporate-friendly parties that have never felt the need to <irony>pander</irony> to human beings for money and volunteer support, while relying on corporate cash to use the media to encourage enough voters to drink their Kool-aid.

The progressive win in Vancouver is a testament to grassroots mobilization. And as much as the Republicans demeaned Obama as being a community organizer, that’s exactly what got him ahead of Hillary Clinton and into the White House, and what got the NPA machine out of Vancouver city hall.

This is also why the BC Liberals’ recent Whistler convention was demonizing the NDP all day, all the time: they’re afraid of being tied in the polls, they’re fiscal neoliberal Milton Friedman worshippers during the biggest global economic crisis in capitalism in a century, they watched Obama get elected and Harper not win a majority [despite calling the election for before the US election, knowing he'll never get a majority after Obama wins], and they know that even with the soft fascist censorship of Bill 42, they are screwed because they are as unable to mobilize human beings to vote them into a third term in May as the NPA was in recent weeks. [Exhale. Sorry for the long sentence!]

The right always loses to mobilized progressives who get out the vote by shedding the apathy we’re lured into by the cynical right wing. And the provincial NDP just successfully ran its third dress rehearsal for the May 2009 election [working on the federal election, the 2 Vancouver by-elections and the munis]. Obama has a database of 3 million contributors. He will not be throwing that away now that he’s elected. He’ll mobilize it. The NPA and the BC and federal Liberals and Conservatives will never have that. But progressives do.

Red States, Blue States

The map of mayoral votes: can you say red states, blue states?

OK, even with no guarantee of data quality and with some oversimplifications, if you know anything about the rich and poor in Vancouver, this map makes perfect sense. Where do the rich and/or conservative live? Yaletown, Point Grey, south of 16th and west of Main, the bedroom community/pseudo-suburb of southeast Vancouver. No surprise, all red for the NPA. Coal Harbour would go NPA if it weren’t largely filled with empty condos owned by thousands foreigners needing a Vancouver home.

Where do the not so rich or conservative, and/or working class and/or immigrants who didn’t buy their citizenship and/or young and/or single live? Everywhere else, where people outnumber the NPA voters and voted Gregor green.

The $100 Million Olympic Village Elephant

Peter Ladner and so many others commenting on the $100 million problem with loaning the Olympic Village development with our cash still don’t get it. It’s not about how certain things happen in-camera. It’s not about whether councilors were fully informed before voting. It’s not about the privacy of businesses. “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Here’s how. Stephen Harper’s sweater vest didn’t save him from demonstrating how out of touch he is with most Canadians when he said the global economic meltdown is a good time to invest in some bargains in the stock market. Heck, even the CanWest toxic waste machine is laying off 560 workers in part because of the global meltdown and their share price dropping 90% this year. They’re sure a bargain, but the better bargain will be in watching them implode so that we can dilute the corporate concentration of media in Vancouver and Canada with more competition and less autocratic control of news…and, frankly, better jobs for the journalists forced to work for the Aspers.

But the $100 million problem is about how the International Olympic Committee and VANOC are not transparent organizations. They are secret, above democracy, and the IOC is even above countries. They’re designed to be unaccountable to us even though they are spending billions of dollars of our tax money while people die in the streets and on surgery waiting lists. Shameful.

Ladner is so out of touch: “It’s completely irresponsible and ridiculous to think that we could do all this in public and still protect the taxpayer….Why would the Olympics be different? The scope is bigger but the framework of the deal is the same. The city does this stuff all the time — it has done this for years.” But when you mix this repulsion with the secrecy of the Olympics oligarchy, you get one pissed off electorate. Whoops.

And he doesn’t even get the irony about how little the taxpayer is being protected in any of this Olympics deal anyway. The solution would have been to explain how in-camera works, then come out and say that when it’s out of in-camera, they’ll explain to people all the details. No, wait. They can’t do that because of all the Olympics secrecy. That’s the bigger whoops. Like it or not, the city is symbiotically embroiled in the grand, global secrecy regime of the Olympics. Watch your wallets, folks.

Plumping

Ellen Woodsworth was elected in a very small part from plumping. Plumping works. Some COPE supporters who were frustrated by the nature of the deal with Vision and Green–and others–voted for only COPE members and not for others on the slate from Vision. Ellen Woodsworth got elected to the last city council spot by 1023 votes over Kashmir Dhaliwal [the only Vision candidate for any council to not get elected] as of 10:24pm Saturday night. I doubt all those votes were from people voting for her and avoiding voting for Vision candidates to keep one or more of them from getting more votes than her. But with not too different arithmetic, the plumpers would have made the difference.

Privatized Police

Korina Houghton didn’t get elected to city council for the NPA even though she had a full-page ad in 24hrs on Friday. Part of her plan was to “combat crime through continued support of the ambassador program” meaning the Downtown Ambassadors, the partially city-funded, private pretend cops designed to criminalize the <irony>unsightly</irony> people from business areas. If 11,300 more voters actually wanted a private police force created by business owners and not transparently accountable to the public despite their public funding, she would have beaten Ellen Woodsworth for the 10th spot on council. Thankfully those 11,300 people don’t exist. And while we’re at it, let’s de-fang the Ambassadors and get them back to helping tourists get from the art gallery back to the cruise ship terminal. And I’ll leave out all that business about Kanman Wong’s campaign literature saying one thing in Chinese and another in English. He’s had his political career maimed enough already…remember David Emerson?

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Now, I won’t go into who from the NPA ranks phoned me the other night, mostly because I block out trauma, explaining to him that I would never in a million years vote for the NPA. He was jovial, wanting to engage with me despite our differences of opinion: a total waste of time.

He said he phoned me because my sister gave him my number and that I would consider voting for him, so he should call me. Right. I have no sister. Maybe the woman he said who came into his store and gave him a phone number wrote it down incorrectly and this hapless fellow phoned me. Or maybe the NPA candidates are cold-calling people in the phone book because that’s where they’re at now.

The phone book seems to me to be the best explanation. It reflects how desperate the NPA is, poised to lose all their seats on city, school and parks boards as they are, what with the COPE-Vision-Green coordinated slate. Well done Mayor Sam Sullivan, destroying the NPA brand in but one term.

But the synchronicity arrived this evening at dinner time when a pollster phoned. It was Innovative Research Group, another group I’ve written about before [see "Racist Survey Questions on a Survey about Multi-Culturalism" from October 15, 2007 at http://PoliticsReSpun.org]. A year ago I wrote about one of their omnibus online polls that asked me many things, including to rank how I felt about a variety of racial groups living in our multi-cultural Canada, on a scale of 0-10 on whether I have a favourable or unfavourable impression of each race. I included a screenshot of those poll questions in my article last year.

Tonight’s IRG poll asked about my awareness and voting intentions in the Vancouver election. And while the poll wasn’t as offensive as last year’s, it did ask one question that bothered me: was I concerned about the number of Vision and COPE school board candidates who have been education union members.

The poll didn’t at all ask how I felt about the number of business owners or candidates with corporate connections in any of the parties. This reflects an ongoing, ingrained mentality in our society that there is a “normal” group of people, and then there are the special interest groups, like unions. This is the same mythology that the NPA has perpetuated for decades, pretending that they are neutral, objective or somehow not beholden to any ideology or group. This is nonsense. Everyone has a bias. Pretending you don’t is a lie.

And while it was far from clear that the NPA commissioned tonight’s IRG poll and loaded it up with that union question, the presence of the question indicates a mindset that special interest groups are treated as marginalized.

Now with the global economic meltdown in full swing and former US Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan testifying before Congress this week that deregulated, neoliberal capitalism doesn’t work, I think that questioning people with corporate connections should be fair game.

An interesting twist came this evening when I swung by the website of Innovative Research Group: http://InnovativeResearch.ca. It turns out they’ve gone off the radar. Here’s a screenshot of their website tonight:

When you click on the image you can see that their entire website consists of one page saying “Welcome to the future home of www.innovativeresearch.ca. This Page is currently under construction.”

Maybe it’s semantics, but honestly, they used to have a full website functioning at that location. Thanks to the marvels of the Way Back Machine, you can see various incarnations of their past websites at http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://innovativeresearch.ca. There could be lots of reasons why they’ve gone under the radar, no longer promoting the coverage of their polls or letting people easily contact them. But their lack of presence, especially because they used to have one, just looks fishy to me.

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The Vancouver NPA, multi-generational vanguard of pretend non-partisanship has finished nominating its candidates.

One significant note here: Kanman Wong is the final NPA council candidate. Remember Kanman? He ran a modestly respectable campaign for the January 2006 federal election as the Conservative party candidate for Vancouver-Kingsway. He got a famous 18% of the vote while David Emerson won the riding and within hours of his victory was fielding calls from John Reynolds to cross the floor to Harper’s side.

So here’s Kanman again, working up the public service thing. And strangely Wendy Yuan, who was displaced from her candidacy in Vancouver-Kingsway when Prime Minister Paul Martin parachuted in his star candidate in 2004–one David Emerson–is now again running as the federal Liberal candidate in Kingsway, though she still owns her house in Richmond while renting a place in Collingwood.

It’s quite surreal. It’s almost as if the David Emerson Experience [with apologies to Jimi Hendrix] has hit an unfathomable pause button on the lives of two would-be politicians, who are now free again to pursue office after their trip to the electoral Twilight Zone.

So back to civic politics again, the Green/Vision/COPE coalition is in shape with COPE’s solid endorsement of its deal with Vision. The campaign will be odd, with common themes, yet distinct wedging for competition among the endorsed candidates. But it will also mean cut-throat jockeying for getting those coveted rationed candidacy positions.

And once the election ends with the hated, anti-social NPA unlikely to have any majority on the councils or boards, the coalition will have to live its three years through its own growing pains, like Blade Runner replicants trying to build up a lifetime of emotional experiences in but a few years. Depending on the flavour of which Vision candidates get nominated, and then elected, we will see Vision function in office as a centre-left bloc or a centre/centre-right bloc of opportunism over intent. Time will tell. And if it drifts rightward, expect a fair amount of defections back COPEward over the next 3 years.

But back on the federal side of the things, Layton being ahead of Dion in the leadership preference polls has serious traction. The NDP have been the de facto opposition for 2.5 years especially as Dion’s gang has abstained their way to greener electoral pastures that never emerged. In fact about a year ago, federal parties were polling almost identically to their results in the federal election 18 months earlier. It’s no different last month.

So now the Conservatives have announced that they’re campaigning against the NDP and the Greens. This means they will preemptively concede a majority by not trying to defeat the Bloc in Quebec, as if the Reform Party [ok, called the Conservatives now] can actually get Quebecers to vote for them without moving to the oil patch first. It also means that by announcing they aren’t competing against the Liberals, that the barely cohesive Liberals should become wary of 1992 when the Progressive Conservatives [remember that party that existed before the Reform Party took over?] were decimated to 2 seats.

But it’s all game theory. Whatever the Conservatives say is designed to cause ripples that they can then surf.

But wait, there’s more. In trying to figure out who is even running for David Emerson’s “Conservative” seat, I’ve finally discovered that it is Solomon Rayek, or Salomon Rayek, depending on who you check with. The Conservative Party website lists the candidate as Solomon, whereas the fellow at SalomonRayek.ca spells his name with an “a.”

Maybe it’s a typo, maybe it’s an irrelevancy. Whatever the case, you’d think they’d try to keep their story straight. And even though they may address this inconsistency some time soon, I wonder how it will be spelled on the ballot. In the end, it presents the feel of this being a throw-away riding, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why the Conservatives would think they have no chance of keeping this riding. Oh ya, David Emerson.

And that brings me back to Kanman Wong…right, he’s running municipally.

But as much as Wendy Yuan is more at home in Richmond, Salomon Rayek is reported as president of the Conservative Party’s Delta-Richmond East constituency association, a position he is still holding according to their website, he is the president of Jewish Advocacy for the Conservative Party, he has also sought the party’s nomination in Burnaby-Douglas, it seems for this election as well. So it appears that he is a candidate in name only in Vancouver-Kingsway as he doesn’t seem to stuck on location. I wonder if he’ll rent an apartment in the same Collingwood building as Wendy Yuan. He owns a home in Capistrano townhouses in Richmond. That would be awkward elevator conversations.

So it seems that we have the Liberals running someone from Richmond who rented an apartment in the riding, against someone for the Conservatives deeply involved in a Richmond riding as well, but who calls Kingsway his home, perhaps only because his youngest son was “born and raised” there. I wonder how much the Vancouver-Kingsway voters will feel like theirs is a proxy riding for a Richmond turf war.

Oh, and some of Salomon Rayek’s published letters to various newspaper editors are here.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Georgia Strait reports that Ryan Windsor is running for the Green Party though its website says this today of Vancouver Kingsway. Maybe they actually have a candidate but wish to keep it a secret:

Vancouver Kingsway

Nominated Candidate – Candidat(e) nominé(e)

If you would like to be a candidate or volunteer for this riding, please contact the Electoral District Association listed below. If there is no Electoral District Association in your riding contact your Provincial Organizer, Rob Hines, Office: 604-689-9200, Cell: 778-689-6666, rob.hines@greenparty.ca

There are many ways to contact us, from e-mail and snail mail to simply walking into our office at Get Connected

And in case you care about recent history, I received this email below as part of a mass mailout on July 9, 2008, showing that the Greens were at least looking to begin setting up an electoral presence in the riding then. And as of today, the website says there are still about a dozen BC ridings without Green Party candidates, including a bunch without constituency associations yet. Unless of course their website is hiding them too. But in the end, they’ll run a candidate even without a constituency association…wild!

The Green Party of Canada is currently seeking to engage individuals in your riding. We support local grassroots democracy and there is no better way to become involved than at a local level. We’re trying to start a local association of the Green Party of Canada in Vancouver Kingsway! The local association, called an EDA (Electoral District Association) has the power to raise funds, issue tax receipts, hold events, elect officers, nominate candidates, and so much more. In fact, the Green Party of Canada is the only national political party that allows EDA’s to have fundraising capabilities.

The local association is the vehicle through which party members organize. The GPC office in Vancouver provides assistance to EDA’s to help organize them. Contact us for any questions regarding what to do next.Once an EDA is registered the GPC automatically starts sharing funds. It is an excellent way to start saving and investing for the next election. Setting up an EDA is easy!

We’re also looking for a candidate to step forward in the riding. The Green Party has run a full slate of candidates in the last two federal elections and intends to do the same for the next election. Even if there is no local association we will have a candidate running.

For more information on how you can get involved today call the BC Organizer, Rob Hines at 778 689 6666 or by email at bc@greenparty.ca. I’ll help you navigate through the process of establishing an EDA, attend your inaugural meeting, and provide ongoing support and training.

–
Rob Hines
Organizer BC & North
Green Party of Canada

bc@greenparty.ca
F 604 689 9200
T 778 689 6666

301-207 W Hastings St
Vancouver BC V6B 1H7

So in the end, The Greens’ website reports no candidate, the Conservatives and Liberals are running folks from Richmond and the NDP have Don Davies. Whew, representation lives!

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In this email, he directs us to his personal campaign website, http://mayorsamsullivan.ca. He is clearly still more irony-free than the last time I wrote about his lack of irony. That episode ended up with the webmaster of Sam’s personal site admitting that the mayor’s office used an email list from the mayor’s personal website to send a message from his civic email address.

This time, after a few items of civic interest, his email promotes a negligibly-valuable earth-focused initiative that will make many of us feel good while leading to very little meaningful change. The kicker? We can read more about this initiative at his personal website.

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At any rate, quite a few.

Rich Coleman, minister responsible for homelessness, however is happy to have a home. I don’t begrudge him being able to afford a home. I just wish he’d do more for the many thousands who cannot enjoy all of what he does.

Minister Coleman’s Facebook page tonight [above] has this juicy little bit [a close-up of the above page]:

In The Tyee you can read the debate about numbers. And my freedom of information requests to BC Housing about their definition of and methodology for counting the homeless may be instructive, whenever they arrive. Even if we go with Coleman’s sad, low number, we read in The Tyee that the government isn’t interested in addressing the needs of more than 1/3 of them.

I know from an ideological standpoint, the Campbell neoLiberal government doesn’t like social housing; nor does Vancouver’s NPA. That communitarian response undermines the market approach of worshiping market housing and just providing grants to some needy [and able to jump through administrative hoops] folks, leaving many of the desperate shivering under overpasses and such.

While there may be a myriad of hidden assistance programs [not that the government is interested in making it hard to apply for assistance for things!], BC Housing’s Rental Assistance Program requires you to have some income from employment to get rental assistance as well as a dependent child under 19 and be regularly filing income tax returns: not conditions that apply to everyone on the street tonight.

I wonder if Coleman’s “it won’t last” is some cosmic, karmic omen…

Happy winter, everyone!

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So on Saturday, December 1, Vancouver’s Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) held their 2007 Ideas Conference, “A Vancouver for Everyone.” With panelists and discussions focussing on our increasingly disastrous symbiotic relationship with our environment, transportation and transit, safety and housing, several dozen members and non-members addressed the issues with a focus on defeating the highly neoliberal and fully partisan Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in Vancouver next November.

The NPA wants to think of us all as consumers. Their neoliberal agenda presumes we are individuals and as their goddess, Margaret Thatcher, has often proclaimed, “there is no such thing as society.” For as individuals, we act in our own self-interest so the market can provide all we need.

Contrasting with that (literally) anti-social philosophy are the recently famous Antarctic emperor penguins where patriarchy oddly does not rule and more importantly, daddies shelter their eggs over the winter by huddling together with all the other daddies, cycling from the centre to the periphery of the huddle to keep warm during the -60 degree Antarctic winters.

Humans, however, are more like the emperor penguins than Adam Smith’s vision of entrepreneurial man (and Mrs. Thatcher).

So COPE, not the party of corporate funding, has explored the reality of community, society and populist politics. Citizens should not view politics as they do a movie in a theatre: we cannot be passive consumers. We must be involved. We don’t all have to run for office, but we do all need to realize that our democracy needs us to engage. That can be attending the Ideas Conference or attending a friend’s living room some Friday evening for coffee to talk about a new car-free festival in the community next summer, or what the new #1 Kingsway community centre should provide in programs for pre-teens.

Highlights from the Ideas Conference can be fodder for any civic discussion among neighbours or friends: a do-it-yourself political meeting that takes no real effort beyond the desire to be a part of our floundering democracy.

Ecologically, Vancouver, is embracing the 19th century model of social planning. We have not yet even conducted a study on the impact on Vancouver of a 1, 2 or 3 metre rise in the sea level. We could become like Venice unless we quickly and drastically reduce our contributions to global warming and mitigate the effects that are already in the pipeline.

Mitigation? How about increasing the height of the dykes that protect our large cities and vulnerable small communities from sea level rises. How about all the dump trucks clogging up Main Street with the fill from underneath Cambie Street in the privatized SNC-Lavalin Line (I’ve just stopped calling it the Canada Line altogether)? Those trucks are dumping the fill into the sea. Did we think ahead to shore up the dykes? No.

In the 19th century, progress was god, just like in Gordon Campbell’s BC where we’ve got a hopelessly inadequate climate change plan and TransLink being turned over to corporate appointees to build more bridges and highways for cars and trucks and the NAFTA Supercorridor’s local network: our Gateway project. We need a transportation agenda for people and the environment.

Our worship of the car shows up with a subsidy from public funds of over $5,000 per year per car while each transit ride is subsidized by $5. A transit commuter’s subsidy, then, is worth only $2,500 per year.

The wildly popular car-free festivals on Commercial Drive over the last 3 summers will take place in 5 Vancouver neighbourhoods next summer. If 5 more neighbourhoods in 2009 join in, we could shut down much of the city to cars on these days by the end of the decade. On the Drive, at the end of the car-free days, people felt displaced and annoyed by the presence of cars again, stealing their space.

And throughout the Ideas Conference we were signing a petition to turn the defunct and squandered Storyeum into a shelter. But prime space like that and other boarded up blocks in the downtown east side are instead being lined up for gentrification by Concord Pacific and other groups.

And in the era when the South False Creek lands no longer have any guaranteed social housing, when the NPA is using creative arithmetic to claim up to 2,000 more social housing units when it’s far less than 1,000, we need to ramp up agitation.

There are 2,300 homeless people in Vancouver, up from 1,200 in 2005 and 600 in 2003. There are 10,500 in BC, up from 5,000 in 2005. Last year the provincial government had a $4.1 billion budget surplus. Next year’s provincial budget will largely pay off the debt and cut personal and corporate taxes, including removing enormous taxes on the big banks, who we all know are highly vulnerable to their net income dipping below $1 billion each quarter next year.

If you didn’t know this, you might be able to blame the most highly corporate-concentrated media in North America for paying more attention to their government, not their role as a free press in a democracy.

And as Jean Swanson and others have recently asked the UN for foreign aid for our housing crisis, officials in the UN say we actually qualify because of this issue, despite our nation’s wealth. Groups in Vancouver are planning on asking other OECD countries for aid for social housing.

If all this doesn’t pressure the anti-social NPA into recognizing we are more like emperor penguins than emperors in training, we all need to get political and work for the next 11 months to vote them out so those of us who actually believe in society can run it, instead of giving it away in cynical corporate welfare programs.

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