A ten-spot of semi-early thoughts on Vancouver’s election results:
1) It was pretentious for the provincial NDP to claim its electoral finance reforms drove big money from municipal politics; it was still there, only slightly better hidden. It is a curious coincidence that its most ideologically aligned mayoral candidate was the beneficiary of this new system.
2) Those rules make it difficult to build brands quickly. The Non-Partisan Association and the Greens benefited from this familiarity, and for Vision, it was a matter of familiarity breeds contempt.
3) With only three council members running for re-election, only two newbies to the political process won council seats: the NPA’s Rebecca Bligh and One City's Christine Boyle. Everyone else was a previous contestant, which does not bode well for future challengers.
4) There is little about Kennedy Stewart that calls to mind his self-characterization as an “independent.” He is a product of the New Democratic Party, abetted by organized labour, and he affirmed their municipal beachhead in winning the mayor’s job. It is very unlikely he will need to reach across to the NPA’s five council members to effect his plans. His fellow travellers are within the five-person Green/One City/COPE cohort, and there will be few differences from the last decade of identity politics, except that he might have more help from Victoria.
5) Stewart’s plan is for 85,000 housing units over 10 years, but the city will only build about 25,000 of those – a paltry measure to deal with who will come to Vancouver and what they will want, much less who is here and what they need. To satisfy the demand for affordable housing, he would need to upend the orthodoxy and commit a ten-figure municipal sum for years. That is how far down the hole we are.
6) In spite of egos, rivalries, even enmities, sometimes in politics it just pays to stick together. The left-of-centre split its large vote, and Stewart nearly didn’t get the job; even though the right-of-centre split its somewhat smaller vote, it nearly won the job. Had Wai Young or Hector Bremner recognized they would not galvanize conservative votes, their support as NPA candidates would have made Ken Sim mayor. Had Shauna Sylvester done the same, Stewart’s victory would have been larger and perhaps extended into more council support.
7) There is a mayor and eight of 10 councillors with no experience in those roles. If I’m a senior city administrator, I am either sighing at the amount of hand-holding ahead, sweating about the ridiculous intrusion on my expertise or salivating at the latitude I will have to do my thing.
8) The three capital budget questions on the ballot passed, so we will be further debt-ridden. A shrewdly managed city would have found ways to mostly, even fully finance these measures without adding to our already serious future financial obligations. We do this every election as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the failure of councils to watch and plan our tax dollars, and we are hitting the wall on unmanageable debt.
9) Any coalition of Metro Vancouver mayors will need to be built from scratch, which means regional efforts to attract business or deal with housing or transit issues needs a do-over.
10) The most obvious issue absent in the campaign was a plan to vitalize the Vancouver economy, particularly the need to attract better-paying jobs. Toronto’s John Tory, almost assured re-election Monday, made that his mayoralty theme. Naheed Nenshi of Calgary is making it his mission. But our new mayor hardly uttered a peep and instead looked at a symptom of the disease – unaffordable housing – rather than the cause or a more effective prescription.
Kirk LaPointe is the editor-in-chief of Business in Vancouver and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
