 Vancouver's issues are serious. So far, Vancouver's election campaign is not | | |  | | | On the cusp of losing the 1993 federal election, her party reduced from 156 MPs to just two, Kim Campbell glibly said a line that has reverberated in campaigns far and wide since: “An election is no time to discuss serious issues.”
The irony, of course, being that serious issues are what campaigns, in theory, should be about: candidates are running to represent their fellow citizens and make decisions that will impact their lives and take away their money, after all.
But more often than not, politicians, their strategies, and all too often the public focus their attention on less “serious issues.”
Which brings us to the Vancouver election.
With three weeks to go, the biggest controversies have been over the mayor’s party having a spreadsheet for fundraising targets — that rival candidates have admitted is legal — along with a court case over whether all candidates can display Chinese characters next to their name on the ballot.
The most recent press release from Kennedy Stewart’s party claims Ken Sim “will cut $330 million from city services,” which isn’t backed up by any reasonable evidence. Sim has only said $330 million of the city’s budget is focused on what is traditionally defined as non-core services, some of which he suggests could be trimmed or re-allocated to expand the police budget.
Sim, of course, has focused much of his advertising campaign claiming that Stewart will immediately implement a road tax if elected, despite Stewart saying it’s not a priority and something the city has no legal ability to do (Sim’s party has since softened the language on their ads).
The other candidate for mayor that at this point seems to have a path to victory, Colleen Hardwick, has a campaign that has been deeply online, regularly amplifying anonymous social media accounts that often accuse people they disagree with as corrupt or worse, and has shared tweets implying that Sim is a communist agent.
These are topics that some people are very passionate about, otherwise they wouldn’t be part of the discussion.
But they have nothing to do with what tangible things candidates would do if they held office, what motions they would pass, how they would try and make housing more affordable or the Downtown Eastside safer.
Those are serious issues.
But that, as Kim Campbell pointed out, is not what most elections are about. | | |  | | | 2. Decision 2022 | | | It’s not the only municipality in B.C. with interesting elections, and we'll continue to cover as many of them as we can in the next three weeks. In Surrey, we’re starting our profiles of the main candidates for mayor, beginning with Jinny Sims. In Port Moody, the giant parking lot next to the Moody Centre Evergreen Line is the centre of discussion for the second campaign in a row — and the site of our first feature on “Trouble Spots” across the region. And why are there so many municipalities in Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria anyway? We take our quadrennial look at why B.C. is so different from the rest of Canada when it comes to a lack of megacities.
Read more | | |  | | | 3. Governance? | | | At the same time, cities continue to operate, and some councils are still meeting and passing last-second bylaws and rezonings: Port Coquitlam just gave the green light to a pair of towers 28 and 30 storeys high (the first ones approved there in a decade), while Oak Bay, after eight(!) years of consultation, gave the green light to secondary suites — which we’re sure never existed in Oak Bay before this, no siree. While in Merritt, the municipality launched a four-day work week pilot program in the hope of attracting, recruiting and retaining municipal workers.
Read more | | | /cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7433177/Screen_Shot_2016_11_08_at_1.38.51_PM__2_.png) | | | 4. Okay, back to politics | | | But for the most part, the focus is now on the election. There are 3,209 people running for office across British Columbia, and some of them get more attention than others — like North Vancouver mayoral candidate Guy Heywood, who said he decided to challenge incumbent Linda Buchanan at the last second because “nobody else had stepped up,” or Richmond mayoral candidate Wei Ping Chen, who lives in Burnaby, or Victoria council candidate Riga Gordon, who was arrested in Langley after not showing up for a court date following an incident with police, or Osoyoos mayoral candidate Dustin Sikora, who recently moved to town from Langley and donated thousands of dollars to the freedom convoy. Ah, democracy.
Read more in the Keremeos Review | | |  | | | 5. De-fault, de-fault! | | | And while most of those 3,000+ candidates are ramping up their campaigns for the home stretch, some are able to take it a bit easier: in Valemount, there are only two people running for the four council slots, which means they’ll have to appoint an extra two after the election. In Comox, the current mayor decided at the last moment not to seek re-election due to health reasons, making councillor Nicole Minions the automatic winner. And in Hudson’s Hope, a similar situation happened when Dave Heiberg’s only challenger dropped out of the race. He told the local media he’s hoping for “calmer times.” We can relate.
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forwarded to you. | | | | That's it for this week! In the meantime, check out the latest headlines at cbc.ca/bc and follow our municipal affairs reporter Justin McElroy on Twitter. And if you have any questions you might want answered in a future mailbag, drop Justin a line at metromatters@cbc.ca. | | | |
