The Non-Partisan Association saga continues with yet another chapter that illustrates how the oldest and, some would say, most venerable municipal party in Vancouver has been taken over by a bunch of right-wing amateurs.
The NPA’s elected caucus has continued to demand that their party’s board of directors call an annual general meeting. Normally, this is the time when members of any political party, including the NPA, elect their directors, who in turn steer the ship. Let me remind you that previously we saw NPA councillor Rebecca Bligh exit the party and sit as an independent soon after the mostly new board was elected November 2019. Six directors later quit in protest over the NPA board sliding into the alt-right abyss.
For reasons totally unfathomable to me, the NPA board did not call an AGM during 2020. Their pretext was COVID and all the ensuing restrictions on gatherings. However, countless organizations, large and small, managed to hold their respective AGMs during this past calendar year by using technology like Zoom.
Just the other day, for example, COPE held its 2021 AGM on Zoom. I was so happy to see more than 90 members join the meeting, which went very smoothly.
Given all the above, I was fascinated to learn about the latest development in the NPA debacle, thanks to Dan Fumano’s recent article in the Vancouver Sun. Seven NPA directors are suing Mayor Kennedy Stewart and the City Vancouver for defamation after Mayor Stewart issued a press release about the “troubling reports of extremism” within the NPA board.
In my 40 years in and around local politics, I have never witnessed such a thing — the directors of one municipal party suing a politician from another municipal party, let alone city hall staff!
We all know you can predict everything — except the future. But I guarantee my prediction is going to come true: This lawsuit will be withdrawn without even proceeding to Examinations for Discovery, let alone trial. (Let me pop on my lawyer’s hat for a minute and explain that Examinations for Discovery is a step in a lawsuit prior to trial where no judge is present but a court reporter records proceedings as the lawyers for each side get to examine, under oath, the individuals involved in the other side.)
City hall watchers, including me, are on the edge of our seats waiting to see what will happen next. As I’ve indicated in previous blogs (last December’s “The NPA is as good as dead” and August’s “Is the NPA on life-support?”) it’s my belief that this is the end of the road for the NPA.
Within a few months, a new centre-right party will come on the scene, and the NPA will be put out of its misery.
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Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
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I think you are right, Tim. The new party — presumably led by Ken Sim and funded by Peter Armstrong et al — will retain all the features of the pre-2018 NPA. It will be, as someone just this weekend described it, the old coalescing of Liberals and Conservatives once again. With Stewart, One City, and the Van Greens morphing into Vision 2.0, there will — more than ever — be both room and requirement for a genuine left wing alternative.
We live in interesting times. If you and I are correct in our prediction that there will soon be a new centre-right party, and if the NPA remains if in name only, than the right-wing vote may be split. More good news is the high turnout at the recent COPE AGM. Over 90 which is the highest we have had for an AGM in many years. Do you predict that Mayor Stewart will create a brand-new party that swallows up OneCity?
Tim, I suspect that Stewart will want to stay as a self-described “independent” but there will be an electoral pact between him and One City negotiated behind the scenes by VDLC.
I am glad that COPE seems to be making a come-back as per the AGM numbers. I am a great believer in early name- and policy-recognition, so getting a spokesperson out in the media (inc social media) ASAP would help the cause.