- It is a little presumptuous for COPE Councillor Ellen Woodsworth and her mouthpiece Charlie Smith to state that the Mayor and Council “opposed a peace and justice committee.” It might have been a campaign promise of Woodsworth’s to introduce the committee back into the fold, but unfortunately for Ellen, her party only won two seats on Council.
The fact that the Vision Vancouver majority chose to anoint advisory committees to deal with seniors, women, people with disabilities, multicultural communities, and LGBTQ communities, as well as maintain some of the other committees that tackle food safety, youth and heritage planning, has to do with priorities for and relevance to the City of Vancouver. No one opposes peace and justice.
If Ellen and her COPE colleagues spend more of their efforts focused on issues residing within the city limits, maybe then they will be able to win a greater amount of seats within Council chambers.
- The Burrard Bridge bike lane trial, like most issues in municipal politics, was never designed to please everyone. So, if you have one block of residential buildings and three businesses vocally upset amidst a sea relatively positive reviews, one must figure that the trial isn’t doing too badly at all.
The concerns of the resident on the ground floor I can understand, although I question whether his neighbours on higher floors have similar complaints or in fact have even noticed at all. What I’ve never quite understood, however, is truth behind the complaints of the businesses, who seem to argue that the previous catchment traffic on Hornby street was a lifeline for their businesses.
Take Appleton Galleries, which specializes in Inuit and first nations art (many pieces of which are very beautiful, and also very exclusive), for example. The owner complains that he has lost half – let me repeat HALF – of his business due to a lack of people hanging a right off the bridge? Before July 13, were those drivers parking immediately? Did they previously just happen to pass by the gallery in their cars and be inspired towards impulse buying?
Something doesn’t quite add up for me with that claim.
- Having worked with George Smitherman way back in the opposition days of 1999, I can confidently say that his personality, his political instincts, and his people skills, are perfectly suited for this, which has been inevitable for many years amongst watchers of the Ontario political scene.
Smitherman is, as one Globe and Mail columnist describes, “a tough, seasoned, smooth-talking political heavyweight, streets ahead of the second stringers on city council who hanker for the mayoralty.” The fact that he was a chief of staff to former Mayor Barbara Hall is just a bonus on top of his steady and high profile performance as a go-to provincial cabinet minister for Premier Dalton McGuinty.
Smitherman is the kind of guy that I would consider making a move to go help out.
- I realize that Ontario municipalities faced a Local Services Realignment by the Ontario Tories in 1998 and had costs for social housing, social assistance, public transit, child care, public health and land ambulance services to municipalities downloaded onto their shoulders (either fully or partially).
Nonetheless, this kind of collaboration between the Ontario provincial government and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) towards “structural cost-sharing changes that will reduce municipal costs and advance social policy and integrated human services delivery” seems preferable to this kind of approach.
BC Liberal supporters will chalk these protests up to Vision Vancouver’s alleged left leanings, but the fact of the matter is that municipalities far beyond Vancouver are going to have to face the pinch of a budget that, when mapped out visually regarding funding increases and decreases, looks like this (blue representing the gains, red representing the cuts).
This was a budget that is going to hit municipalities hard (without even talking about the HST), and I assume that this kind of backlash is just the beginning of an upcoming tidal wave for the BC government.
- I have heard that the NPA board elections are a convoluted mess that even hard-core supporters are having trouble deciphering. Some who earned enough votes in last year’s fiasco won three-year terms and are not up for reelection, while others who came at the bottom of the voting results must now face their membership once again.
Considering that the current executive got in with around 100 votes (give or take a couple of dozen), the counting process for those vying for the political equivalent of a ticket on the Titanic should be pretty seamless.
But the question remains – why are NPA board members not installed equally?
- Finally, here is a fantastic article by Councillor Andrea Reimer detailing the accomplishments of City Council over their first nine months. There is a tangible list of actions taken on a number of key issues, and a good synopsis on a few of the new directions that have been led by a party that swept to power on some bold policy pronouncements.
Jonathan,
I am not Ellen Woodsworth’s mouthpiece. Our paper did not recommend Woodsworth in 2005 in part because of her response to Fred Bass’s truthful remarks about Larry Campbell. Woodsworth was not happy about this. We recommended her in 2008, but did not “strongly recommend” her. We saved this designation for three candidates: Kerry Jang, David Cadman, and Chris Shaw.
We have offered Suzanne Anton an opportunity to write an opinion piece on our site, but she has not taken us up on this. When the B.C. Liberals had an overwhelming majority in the legislature, we created a regular column for Bill Tieleman to ensure there was an opposition voice in our paper.
I have always paid attention to the voting records of politicians and their pre-election positions in various candidate questionaires. I feel we should pay attention to what politicians do and not necessarily what they say. When you do this, you discover that some of them aren’t nearly as liberal or progressive as they purport to be.
For instance, if Vision Vancouver was truly interested in addressing the inherent racism in an at-large municipal election system, it would be trying to generate concern about this in the community. To date, I have seen no evidence that this is on Vision Vancouver’s radar screen with the exception of concerns expressed by Raj Hundal and published in our paper.
The mayor and council could have created a peace and justice committee, but they refused to do so. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.
Charlie Smith
Georgia Straight