Set aside partisan sentiment for a moment: our municipal politics in Vancouver are broken not only because of the mishaps of the governing party.
They are broken, too, by the limited reach of our governance, the deficiencies in representation and the flaws of a party system. We deserve to debate these matters in this campaign.
The largest of these issues is the feeble heft of our municipalities. The overlap is a mess among the dozens of elements of Greater Vancouver. We work in rival silos. We consequently fight below our weight class on the North American stage. It is an economic no-brainer to develop an amalgamated political region.
I have lived where other major Canadian cities – albeit with growing pains – came to recognize the value of an enlarged municipal boundary. It serves citizens more efficiently, advocates more forcefully, attracts investment more systematically and manages land more creatively, among much else.
At the moment cities that are metres and minutes apart bid against each other for businesses and developments. They offer land deals and tax breaks in a race to the bottom. Our policing is a mishmash of forces and pint-sized detachments. Bickering on our transit strategy has set us back a full decade and led us into desperate times to finance something, anything, even outdated ideas, to feign progress. And despite the finite nature of our land base, our region has surprisingly uncharacteristic sprawl for this amount of geography.
Granted, last week’s absurdity of the Metro Vancouver board awarding itself retroactive pension improvements does not enhance any argument for regional governance or amalgamation. But if you set that aside, the concept deserves at least a solid evaluation on what it offers as a vision on the difficult times ahead.
Let’s be real: functions are being downloaded to cities and our debt loads will weigh down generations without room to absorb additional taxes to accommodate additional needs.
If our governance requires scale, it also requires more precision, granularity, connection and accountability. We lost a ward system eight decades ago, and what’s clear is that our political chambers do not reflect our nearly two dozen distinct districts in Vancouver.
Workplaces all over are fixing their representational gaps, but our political offices are comparably passive about the problem. A ward system would provide more opportunities for diversity at city hall and a clearer link to neighbourhood concerns. Our elected officials, in turn, could no longer afford to ignore much in their midst.
At the very least, we should be creating a Portland or Seattle-style department of neighbourhoods to bring forward issues to the at-large councillors. But revisiting the ward system is worthwhile.
I was privileged to run in 2014 for mayor under the auspices of the Non-Partisan Association, but party politics in the municipal arena still seem ill-fitting. Few cities have them and most big ones don’t.
On the basis of their last decade or so, they haven’t worked. They’ve acted as monoliths, rarely voting as anything but a bloc. When you think of it, the mayor and five councillors run the city. Six people for 600,000-plus residents.
This notion of more appropriate reflection in a political institution comes as we beckon a B.C. vote on proportional representation. Interesting, isn’t it, how we appear to be moving toward political coalitions and collaboration in the province, but few question the winner-take-all party system serving our city?
I do.
Adversarial municipal parties that do not countenance even occasional conscientious breaks from the ranks haven’t profited us for some time. We might do better.
These are difficult, at times unpopular, but crucial conversations for our community. I suspect we won’t have them because they don’t serve the interests of the incumbents. Even most challengers are implicated.
But perhaps we have outlived Kim Campbell’s famous saying. Perhaps in 2018, an election is exactly the time to talk about serious issues.•
Kirk LaPointe is editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver Media Group and vice-president of Glacier Media.
