When the provincial NDP were elected in 2017, one of their first orders of business was a very positive change to campaign financing at the municipal level. Within months, they passed legislation prohibiting donations to municipal political parties from corporations and unions, and banning individual donations over $1,200.
Vancouver’s two developer-friendly municipal parties — Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association — were dealt a devastating blow. These two parties had been bankrolled almost entirely by very large donations from Vancouver’s business elite, including some of the city’s biggest real estate developers. In the case of the NPA, this had been happening for a very long time since the party dominated city council for decades.
After the legal change to campaign donations, Vision Vancouver found itself unable to campaign in the 2018 civic election as it had every election since its founding in 2005.
It was no more disadvantaged than any other political party because of the new law. But Vision had become so used to spending so much on election ads and their enormous army of paid staff, they found themselves wiped out at city council, electing zero candidates. Ditto for the park board. Vision’s sole seat last election was on the school board.
With such poor results, many have predicted that the 2018 election was Vision Vancouver’s swan song.
While the NPA, Vancouver’s other pro-developer party, did much better than Vision last election, it has shown major cracks since then.
The first crack appeared when the NPA board of directors was taken over at their last AGM in December by social conservatives. (The term “social conservatives” is used in a number of ways these days, but you’ll find examples in the very right-wing Stockwell Day, and groups like the Reform Party, Alberta’s Social Credit party, Focus on the Family and the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. They believe in all the old-school bourgeois values that privilege Western, Christian, heterosexual, materialistic upper classes. They also want to turn the clock back on feminist gains, like abortion.)
If you can believe it, one of the new “social conservative” directors and the NPA’s new chief fundraiser, Christopher Wilson, is the former BC director of the alt-right, sensationalist media outlet, Rebel News! Read all about him in this excellent article by Charlie Smith in The Georgia Straight. Wilson is known for his sly videos defending Donald Trump’s racist views and questioning the motives of Black athletes who “take a knee.” He’s also a member of the BC Conservatives, who want to kill our very successful carbon tax. He questions climate science, and kept calling our federal environment minister, Catherine McKenna, a “Climate Barbie” until he got called out by the minister herself and Tabatha Southey in Maclean’s. (He later deleted the tweets.) Note that two other new “social conservative” directors on the NPA board were previously endorsed by an association that opposes SOGI, which helps make schools more inclusive for LGBTQ students. So copy out this paragraph and keep it on your fridge if you’re tempted to vote NPA in the coming election.
All this prompted Councillor Rebecca Bligh, who is openly queer, to leave the NPA caucus in December, and sit as an independent. She was a moderate voice, capable of attracting centre-right voters.
More recently, city hall watchers were shocked to see four of the remaining moderate voices on the 15-member NPA board resign, as they were unable to stomach the far-right, undemocratic direction the party is obviously taking.
One of the four moderates, Jane Frost, told The Globe and Mail, “… they found themselves thwarted by a group of new board members who don’t seem interested in holding meetings, speaking out on important issues facing the city or including all current and potential NPA members.“
It’s easy see that new forces even more right of the usual centrist-right bent of the NPA now have lots of freedom to point the party in a direction that will surely result in its demise. Vancouver’s electorate is way too moderate to ever elect a city council dominated by far-right individuals.
It’s always a mug’s game predicting the future, especially in politics. However, I won’t be surprised to see the further implosion of the NPA and a brand new centre-right party born out of the remnants of Vision Vancouver and the moderate wing of the NPA that will be looking for a new political home.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (Aug. 11, 2020): 412.40 ppm
One year ago (Aug. 11, 2019): 410.43 ppm
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The provincial government should mandate the ward system of elections on all major cities. I have been supporting ward since the 1970s. Surrey might get wards before Vancouver . Vancouver needs to change many of the VISION staff that are not progressive and are trying to hide the “truth”
from City Council.
What a shame that COPE, when it achieved its historic majority on council in 2002, did not petition the provincial government to implement wards. COPE hired former justice Thomas Berger to hold public hearings on a ward system and to make recommendations on wards. The overwhelming number of submissions were in favour of wards and Berger recommended them in his report. Unfortunately, the four co-councillors who went on to leave COPE and found Vision Vancouver refused to follow the wish of the majority of the COPE caucus, and instead opted for a referendum. They ensured that the referendum would not be successful and today we still do not have wards.