The Paralympic Games have thus far been treated with disrespect by everyone except the Vancouver public, who have embraced them with open arms.
We are on the verge of hosting the second largest multi-sport festival on earth and about to bare witness to strength, determination and courage the likes of which our region has rarely experienced. Yet it is a number of high-profile snubs rather than the celebrations that have left an indelible mark on me as an observer.
Paralympic Ambassador Sam Sullivan has a very short memory about his own record in office.
Today’s Vancouver Courier arrived on my doorstep with the following front page headline:
In consideration of the efforts of Sullivan to make Vancouver the most accessible jurisdiction in the world in advance of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, this is most definitely a scandal.
The problem for the current Paralympic Ambassador and former Mayor, however, is that responsibility for the scandal rests solely on his shoulders.
CivicScene's makes a return to the Vancouver Sun this morning.
CivicScene is back with the first oped in a new series beginning in today’s Vancouver Sun.
Critics of the current administration at City Hall tend to frame their grievances on the accusation that the civil service has been politicized. In fact, when I spoke to lone NPA City Councillor Suzanne Anton over the Olympic Games and asked what her biggest objection to Vision Vancouver was, this was her first response.
But let’s for a moment consider the alternative.
Some former NPA affiliated staffers are running extremely low in the memory department.
So, a Freedom of Information request filed by City Caucus’ Daniel Fontaine has discovered that the Property Endowment Fund (PEF) board did not meet during the calendar year of 2009.
Without the time nor the inclination to find out the frequency of meetings in previous council years, however, the magic of the Internet has turned up some interesting facts about the reign over the PEF by former NPA Mayors/mayoral candidates.
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An article titled Vancouver Politics by Paul Tennant in The Vancouver Book (1976), describes the entry of TEAM onto the civic political scene in 1968. TEAM, wrote Tennant, “sought to be a moderate reform group appealing to persons of all political ideologies.”
On their left was COPE (the Committee of Progressive Electors), also formed in 1968, and on their right was the NPA (the Non-Partisan Association), which had been a power in city politics for nearly four decades, and which “held that the affairs of the city should be run by those with the necessary knowledge and experience, i.e., those with a professional-managerial background, in order to run the city in a business-like way.”
The reformers, on the other hand, “felt that civic decision-making should be open to the public, with leadership coming from a cross-section of the population, and rule going to the working class majority. This group was concerned about land use, they advocated city control, and preferred to structure politics around the neighborhood concept.”
“It was very diverse, and we got together by word of mouth. There were professors, business people, labor, lawyers and from all across the city. It was a coalescing of people around the idea we should do something.” – former City Councillor Setty Pendakur on the formation Vancouver’s reform movement and its political manifestation – TEAM – came into being in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
