It is all but forgotten in the face of the more recent and remarkable municipal election results, which I will get to in a moment.
But nothing this past year in Vancouver likely caught us more by surprise that the surgical removal of the senior management team of the Portland Hotel Society.
Last spring, the provincial government, in a pincer action most generals would admire, put the squeeze of the Downtown Eastside’s most prominent social agency.
It was led by audit teams from B.C. Housing and Vancouver Coastal Health, and proved, once again, if you want to take someone out, don’t go after their policies, check their expense accounts.
There was not a whimper of protest from other agencies in the ’hood, so successful had the Portland crowd been over the years in pissing every one of them off.
All is now quiet while a government appointed interim board does its work.
The election campaign provided its own distractions with debates around celibate cetaceans, a monologue on masturbation and a secret taping of a union meeting.
The ruling Vision Party and Gregor Robertson were taken on by a well-funded total political rookie NPA mayoral candidate in the person of Kirk LaPointe.
The NPA relied on Vision’s administrative ineptitude of the past several years, which caused community groups across the city and across the political spectrum to rise up angrily.
As a result there was an initial plethora of political parties forming among those already existing which were being energized in protest.
But as the campaign evolved, and as the election results proved, a number of the centre-right parties — TEAM and Cedar — aligned themselves with LaPointe and Vancouver 1st ran no mayoral candidate.
Meanwhile the centre left continued to battle amongst themselves or made quiet alliances — like Vision, OneCity Vancouver and the Public Education Project, that only served to weaken them all because of vote-splitting. None had more effect at blunting Vision’s prospects than COPE and the Greens, which both attracted progressive voters who were anything but enthusiastic about another term of Vision with the same level of power across the board it held during the past six years.
If all that seems complicated, the results were fairly straightforward. Vision had its worst showing in the past three elections, making it almost a certainty Robertson will not seek another term.
It lost the school board and the park board and it lost its “super majority” of eight votes on council, which will inhibit its ability to pass money bills — the budget, grants and capital programs — without relying on the opposition. In fact, it slid so far down that its successful city council candidates came behind Green and the NPA on the final ballot count.
And, just think, it could have been even worse if not for Robertson’s 11th hour apology, “I hear you,” once again asking forgiveness rather than permission for years of riding roughshod over community protests.
In spite of the mea culpa, that obviously came back to bite Vision nowhere more obviously than at school board. That’s where Janet Fraser was elected at the sole Green candidate and holds the balance of power there. And while she has the credentials suitable for a school board trustee, she also has a life leading a group called Marpole Matters. They pushed back against the Marpole Community plan and other attempts to bring density to their neighborhood.
Put that together with three years of pent-up resentment by Green Party leader Coun. Adriane Carr as a result of how she was treated by the Vision council during her first term and you have a great recipe for payback. It does help explain what you saw when Carr, Fraser and Green park board commissioner Stuart Mackinnon got together to agree on pushing Vision’s Patti Bacchus out of the school board chair’s position in favour of the NPA’s Christopher Richardson. Ain’t politics fun?
As for winners and losers: well, the Greens have never done better with four candidates elected. And the NPA is making a bit of a comeback at the expense of Vision. The biggest loser was COPE. For one of the first times since Harry Rankin was elected in 1966, COPE, which was also wiped out in 1996, failed to win even one seat anywhere.
Note: this story has been updated since first posted
agarr@vancourier.com
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