Why Vision Deserves Vote of Progressives in Vancouver

First off, if you support Gregor Robertson and Vision, there's only one word of mine you need to read: vote.

As of Nov. 11, the NPA's Kirk LaPointe was only four points behind Gregor. Unless you turn out to cast your ballot, this municipal election on Nov. 15 will be a repeat of Christy Clark's surprise victory last year.

But if you're one of the 27 per cent of voters who are still undecided about Gregor, I want to tell you why you should take the trouble to vote for him and the Vision slate.

I was an early backer of Happy Planet Juices (which Gregor co-founded). Gregor is a friend, and I like fruit smoothies as much as the next person, but my support for Vision is not personal. I trouble my friends, colleagues and anyone who will listen with my pitch for Gregor and Vision because they've taken on the hard work of addressing homelessness, affordability and environmental destruction.

If that sounds abstract, here are five examples of their achievements in the past six years:

• In three years, Vision leveraged over 500 new childcare locations, and two years ago they put $5 million -- the total surplus budget -- into support for affordable child care.
• Vision has taken its commitment to housing and homelessness seriously, adding 1,500 new units of low-income housing through purchases of two Ramada Hotel locations (on East Hastings and Kingsway), rentals at the Howe Street Quality Inn, and the addition of many other new sites.
• Vision created the Vancouver Rent Bank to offer short-term loans to low-income renters at risk of being evicted. (In one year, the Rent Bank supported 228 people -- including 39 children -- from becoming homeless.) Via the Short-Term Incentives for Rental and Rental 100 programs, Vision approved a thousand new rental units, whereas zero units approved in Vancouver in 2008-2009.
• Vision came out against the Kinder-Morgan pipeline expansion and the Fraser Surrey Docks coal export terminal on the Fraser River -- and banned any future coal facilities from being built in Vancouver.
• Vision has made the Broadway subway a top priority, because it will keep tens of thousands of cars off the road -- keeping our air cleaner and moving us closer to the 2020 goal of having 50 per cent of all trips be taken via transit, bike, or walking.

NPA part of right-wing national agenda

If the NPA wins this election, these kinds of programs and commitments will evaporate, as their concern is in clear-cutting badly needed social programs and policies that would limit destructive projects like pipelines. (If anyone would argue municipal governments can't affect big-ticket environmental issues, look at what the City of Burnaby has done on the Kinder Morgan expansion.)

The NPA does not have the interests of the vulnerable, or concern for our collective social and environmental future, at heart. Oddly, they appear to regard issues like homelessness and oil spills as externalities rather than civic priorities.

No. The NPA wants to guide Vancouver in a very different direction: backwards.

Yes, Vision has made some mistakes in public processes, but they've taken that criticism squarely and learned from it. Choosing not to vote, or splitting the vote with a protest for a party that can't win, is not the way to respond. If we do, we'll play right into the hands of the NPA, something Stephen Harper and his many allies in B.C. and beyond would greatly appreciate.

If this sounds like empty rhetoric, of which we've all had more than enough, consider that -- as has already been reported here in The Tyee and on PressProgress.ca -- one of the main architects of Kirk LaPointe's mayoral campaign is Dmitri Pantazopoulos, a Conservative strategist. Pantazopoulos was Christy Clark's principal secretary, and his former employers include Rob Ford and Stephen Harper.

Here are a few quotations from Pantazopoulos, from an address he gave to the conservative Manning Centre in Calgary, on targeting municipal governments in order to eliminate taxation and costly regulation:

“One of the great challenges of municipal governments are, first of all, that it's got the fastest-growing area of spending and taxation. While the federal government and provinces are doing what they can to restrain either the growth of spending or actual spending, municipal governments are actually increasing spending.

“They talk about infrastructure deficits and so forth, and whether these are real or imagined, we never really actually get to have that debate…”

“We have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25,000 elected municipal officials across the country and that's if you exclude school boards… There really isn't strong, or hasn't been strong, small-c conservative vehicles [to address this]…. I guess the point here is that this is the single greatest threat to small-c conservatives, and the single greatest opportunity because we're not exploiting the opportunity to the extent that we can.”

Stakes too high

Infrastructure deficits are real. Transit needs are real. Homelessness is real. But for the NPA's conservative backers, this election is simply a chance to exploit an opportunity to cut back on municipal initiatives -- initiatives that are leading us into a sustainable, socially just future.

Unlike the NPA, Vision's interest is inclusive. It's long-term. And it includes the greater B.C. coast of which we're a part. We can't separate our cities from the larger world, or balk at our responsibility to provide our children with a livable future. That's an old paradigm. We need new leaders with a bigger vision for life. That's Gregor -- and Vision.

The stakes are too high to let our city be clawed back into the dark ages. You can find out where to vote here, and if you're out of town this weekend, that same link will tell you to how to vote in advance.

Please vote for Gregor and Vision, and tell three (or five, or 10) of your friends to get out and vote too. What you do, or don't do, will make all the difference for our future.