September 21, 2010 - 10:27 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
The electoral future of the party is in the hands of COPE's powers that be.
Stephen Elliott-Buckley has an interesting live-blogging account of COPE’s AGM, which took place this past Sunday.
Now it must be noted that the one hundred people that showed up for the meeting, half of which were monthly contributors to the party, are about double the crowd that has bothered to show up for multiple meetings for the Non Partisan Association. And so in spite of the fact that recent polling shows that the NPA still attracts about 28 per cent support when compared to 13 per cent for COPE, the ability of COPE to produce an army for getting out the vote on election day is still very real and formidable. Election watchers will note that one of the NPA’s biggest downfalls in 2008 was the fact that their e-day contingent was absolutely dwarfed by the combined forces of Vision Vancouver and COPE.
Which brings me to the most important topic that emerged from the meeting: how the distinct stands of COPE over the past two years:
- opposing the tax shift from business to residents
- demanded a timeline on the province’s affordable housing sites
- reopening Little Mountain
- restoring arts funding
- city-wide wireless, and scooter parking
- campaign finance reform caps
- preserving Stanley Park farm and the Conservatory
- electoral reform
- opposing civil liberties violation by-laws before the Olympics
- amateur sports at Empire Bowl
- increasing green space at Hastings Park
- gave back Olympics tickets
- building a coalition to fight education cuts
- for transparent neighbourhood engagement
can be rationalized with a new deal of cooperation with Vision Vancouver. Because as I see it, Vision and COPE will be equally reliant on such an agreement being reached in order for both parties to fulfill their respective electoral goals.
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May 14, 2010 - 12:57 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
March 9, 2010 - 9:06 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
COPE and Vision Vancouver sang and danced together in 2008, but will their tryst continue in the 2011 electoral campaign?
The recent utterings of hypocrisy by Councillor Ellen Woodsworth and Councillor David Cadman have got me thinking about the electoral cooperation that COPE and Vision Vancouver successfully exercised in the 2008 civic election.
(On a side note, I will be very interested to see how many events Councillor Woodsworth actually attended during the Olympics, as the rumour is that she was frantically asking for tickets to any event she could possibly insert herself into – regardless of comments by her colleague Councillor Cadman about said tickets being “a perk of position.”)
The deal between COPE and Vision currently remains in limbo, as both sides seem to be content to let things be ironed out at the last minute, as was the case in 2008.
Here are the strategic considerations for both sides to consider in a conversation that would be wise to have sooner rather than later.
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February 1, 2010 - 11:00 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Councillors Cadman and Woodsworth are immersed in Olympic sized hypocrisy over Olympic tickets.
So COPE’s two City Councillors – Ellen Woodsworth and David Cadman – and their lone Park Board Commissioner – Loretta Woodcock – have been invited to the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies but have refused, citing the fact that they aren’t willing pay for tickets on their own, and thus they are not going to accept them from the City.
To begin with, there are a lot of things that these officials probably wouldn’t do on their own if their weren’t elected – sitting in Council chambers until past midnight listening to concerned citizens have their voices heard, attending events on many evenings and on weekends at the expense of family time, reading reams of staff reports that most likely is comprised of a small forest by year’s end, just to name a few – but they do them because they ran for office willingly, and are now fulfilling the duties associated with the job.
But what bothers me about this vacuous martyrdom (each and every Councillor should at the very least be responsible to attend the ceremonies to represent the host city) is that it benefits no one (do they think that by not showing up the city is going to save money when the tickets have already been purchased?) and worse, it has all the characteristics of partisan hypocrisy designed to get media attention.
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