These wo former competitors have since formed a strong working relationship within City Hall, giving Vision peace within the caucus.
The landscape of BC politics right now is like nothing that observers have ever experienced before. A Premier has just stepped down, and his party is now at the beginning stages of what should be a hotly contested leadership contest. The stakes of this race are huge, as the winner becomes the new leader of the province, and the one tasked with pulling the BC Liberals out of the toilet.
Far be it for the ridiculous New Democratic Party to take an advantage of such a situation, as they are embroiled in a partial caucus revolt against their own leader. The dissidents are determined to push the envelope until Carole James walks out the door, which might happen soon with a leadership review likely coming in the new year.
If we turn our attention to the municipal scene in Vancouver, even the NPA continues to struggle with factions within their party, even as they try to rebuild the organization back into a competitive force for next year’s election. The recent party fundraiser saw Park Board Commissioner Ian Robertson and his silent supporters draw a line in the sand between them and the Sam Sullivan loyalists, while delivering a speech that showed he was most definitely going to take a shot at being the party’s Mayoral candidate. Meanwhile, Councillor Suzann Anton continues to cling to the Sullivan faithful for her base of support, making a showdown between the two an inevitability, and rehashing of all the nastiness that ensued between the Peter Ladner and Sullivan forces back in 2008. This is of course just the latest episode in a party that for many years has cannibalized its own in the name of personal politics of ambition.
Which brings me to Vision Vancouver. For a party that continues to grow as a coalition of progressive forces, the caucus has been one of the most peaceful that Vancouver’s civic political scene has seen in several terms.
