And then there was none.
Last Sunday we got the word: the only COPE candidate elected last time round, Vancouver School Board trustee Allan Wong, had quit his party to join Vision.
The hollowing out of that once influential left-of-centre COPE continued this week when prominent West End activist and former COPE park board candidate Brent Granby decided to follow Wong.
Even before Granby announced his move, he was showing his new colours: While Randy Helten and the West End Neighbours were kvetching about Vision’s West End Community Plan a few weeks back, Granby was annoying COPE hardliners, who see Helten as an ally, by singing the plan’s praises.
Granby is just the latest high-profile person to abandon the 45-year-old civic party, which reached its peak of power by finally winning a solid majority at council, school board and park board behind Mayor Larry Campbell in 2002.
Other notables to leave include second-generation COPE member and member of the party’s executive Donalda Greenwell-Baker, former NDP MLA David Chudnovsky and former COPE council candidate R.J. Aquino. One-time Green Party leader Stuart Parker also left the executive over disagreement with the party’s direction. And then there is a raft of disgruntled rank and file members who have taken a walk.
COPE’s current careening-towards-electoral oblivion began, in the view of three-term COPE councillor David Cadman, just prior to the last civic election. Cadman who says, “I’m observing but not engaging” noted that’s when another former COPE councillor, Tim Louis, stacked the party’s September 2011 nomination meeting in his own favour and got Cadman bounced as a candidate.
As a result of that stunning move and Louis’s decided lack of enthusiasm about COPE’s alliance with Vision, some perfectly good COPE candidates, including a number of incumbents, got passed up by the electorate. Cadman says Wong had the advantage of attracting the significant Chinese vote and was the sole survivor.
Cadman says COPE became an organization where there was a constant “fracas going on amongst the members. By the time you got to an election you had a divided leadership.”
This past April, Louis managed a takeover of the COPE executive, which is now committed, among other things, to running against Vision.
Not all those who have departed have migrated over to Vision. Chudnovsky is notable among the free agents. He has serious reservations about the city’s ruling party. They include what he considers its “failure” to deal with the issue of affordable housing.
He also says there is a “growing frustration” among community activists in Vancouver that Vision does not “genuinely consult.” It is a pattern of behaviour, he says, including the party’s treatment of community centres, community plans and the Little Mountain Housing project.
People present their views, believe they are being consulted yet, in the end, “things come out of nowhere” from the city.
Regardless of his reservation about Vision, Chudnovsky says COPE “no longer speaks for the whole city.” And it is neither “respectful” nor “useful” to the city. It has simply become the personal hobby horse for Louis and his allies.
No matter where Chudnovsky and the rest end up, COPE and Louis have a major problem: Money. COPE was originally founded by lawyer and city councillor Harry Rankin and the Vancouver and District Labour Council. It has been bankrolled primarily by the labour movement ever since.
Last time out major unions insisted COPE form an alliance with Vision if it wanted their money. Now, influential union leaders like CUPE’s Paul Faoro are clear that if COPE and Louis run a full slate and a mayoral candidate against Vision and Gregor Robertson union “money will not roll.”
In other news of the dearly departed, a staffer within the city’s communications department calculated that department’s turnover rate.
The organization, which has grown from a half dozen to about 20 staffers under Vision, has become more of a brick wall than an open window when it comes to providing information to we ink stained wretches and digital drudges.
It has also seen a whopping 30 people come and go from its payroll under Mayor Gregor Robertson’s watch.
agarr@vancourier.com
twitter.com/allengarr
