Tag: Politics

Two down, two to go.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

It’s been just a little more than two years since I became a City Councillor in New Westminster. In the spirit of consistency, I probably need to follow up on last year’s Year-in-the-Life post. So here are some thoughts about being a City Councillor at the half-way mark of my first term.

That New Councillor Smell has definitely worn off. Although this role involves constant learning, I feel I am up over the steep part of the curve and am more confident in my ideas about what does and does not work in the City. This is manifest in a (hopefully subtle) change from me asking myself “why are things this way?” to a more pointed asking others “Do things really need to be this way?”

I am also becoming more aware of the politics that affect my ability to do my job. Every decision you make in Council is a compromise between competing forces. Even the best possible decision is going to be perceived negatively by someone, for good reasons or bad, and no matter how open, pragmatic, or evidence-based your decision making is, criticism can come from any random, unanticipated direction.

I feel fortunate that our Council, despite our ability to disagree on many issues, is remarkably functional. I hear disaster stories from other Councils that refuse to work together or allow their grievances (petty or serious) to prevent them from doing their work. Some are played out in the media, some others I only hear about through the various grapevines. I have heard first-hand accounts of Councillors in other cities suffering from bullying and harassment within their Councils, and of serious enough threats from the public that police involvement was required. I feel fortunate that our City, as passionate and engaged as it is in civic matters, is largely free from these types of conflicts.

I still lose sleep on Sunday nights before Council meetings. I still struggle with some of the hard decisions and increasingly wear the less-than-ideal things that happen in the City. However, I still believe that government can be open, accountable, and effective, and that we can make (are making?) progress towards the City working better in ways people can see.

I am worried about the impact our aggressive capital replacement plan is having on our budget – but also worried about what happens if we let our capital program slide for too long. I fret a bit over our seemingly chronic inability to complete projects on time. I am trying to be vigilant in avoiding creating my own communication bubble where I am only hearing reinforcement of my own ideas (this is most prevalent in the OCP discussion – I think we are on a the right track, but need to keep an open mind for when the draft plan gets to Council in the New Year). I am trying to be mindful on the job and open to better ways to do it.

I was asked recently at a Christmassy social event: “What is your big goal for this Council thing?” I started talking about this blog, the outreach I have been working on, the City’s Community Engagement efforts, and my overall desire to open up the process of democratic decision making. My inquisitor kept trying to get over to tangibles: new buildings, bridges, parks, things you can attach a brass plaque to. It’s funny I couldn’t get there. We are making progress on several projects, the CGP replacement, library upgrades, a better functioning City Hall, the reformation of the waterfront, but I don’t see those as “my” successes or projects. These are things that large teams of people are working towards, and 70,000 taxpayers are paying for. Although I suppose my feeling of ownership will change if I see my name on a brass plaque…

Finally, I’m half way through the term and finally accepting that adjustments need to be made in my lifestyle. I have been burning a lot of candles, and have frankly lost track of which ends of which I have lit. I am going on vacation for a few weeks to recharge my batteries and pay some much-needed attention to my partner. For my return, I have some pretty drastic lifestyle adjustments planned in order to maintain my household, my relationships, and my sanity. I want to keep blogging (and even do more), I want to be more timely at returning communication I receive, and I have a few tangible projects around town and regionally I want to take a bit of ownership over. I have a long list of “we need to get together over coffee/beer and talk about that” dates I need to keep (you know who you are). This will take a change in programming. Stay tuned.

Until then, we’ll call this a Christmas break. I hope you enjoy your Holidays in whatever form that enjoyment takes, and your 2017 is filled with he things that make you happy. Blogging will resume in January, inshallah.

Cazart!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

Cursory apology for not writing enough or answering my queued “Ask Pat”s. Things will change in January, I’m not promising much until then. However, something this newsworthy requires comment, and I’m not going to sleep tonight until I write something down. No time for editing, let’s go.

“Cazart!” is a word invented by the Doctor of Gonzo Journalism, Hunter S. Thompson. He defined it as “Holy Shit! I should have known.” However that definition lacks the sense of fatal acceptance and calm that the second clause must be spoken with in order to hit the true feeling. It is the shock of surprise at something that was always obvious; we knew it was coming, but perhaps we hoped against.

To quote the esteemed Doctor himself:

“Cazart” goes far beyond mere shock, outrage, etc. If Bill had a better grip on semantics, he would have told you it meant “Holy Shit! I might have known!” Fatalism, I’d say. It’s a mountain word, but not commonly used……In contemporary terms, we might compare it to the first verbal outburst of a long-time cocaine runner who knew he was bound to be nailed, eventually, but when it finally happens he instinctively shouts “Cazart!”

A good friend of mine succinctly summed up in a tweet much of my thoughts  – not just about the approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension Project, but about the way we continue to dance around the edges of serious issues in this province and this country:

Stickers

The profundity of that comment needs a whole new blog post. so instead, I’m going to write about the completely predictable failure represented by the approval of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Extension Project.

I am not a distant observer of the Trans Mountain project. I worked on the Environmental Assessment National Energy Board Review. I read and critiqued the Project Description, and the reams of correspondence from stakeholders, intervenors, commenters. I was a participant the Review Process, and could see how the cards were stacked. I attended the protest camp at Burnaby Mountain and wrote about the impacts on New Westminster. I spent a bunch of time converting tonnes to barrels to cubic metres to understand the throughputs of the existing and planned pipelines, what it means for tanker traffic, for our domestic fuel supply in the Lower Mainland, and for Pacific Northwest refineries. I attended emergency planning drills at the Westridge Terminals when they ran boom boats around showing how easy a clean-up was (a very different experience that folks up in Bella Bella had with the Nathan E. Steward spill). I have talked with my colleagues from across the Pacific Northwest at the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance. I attended the Trudeau government “Panel Review” that was meant to get to the bottom of the conflict about the project, and found it wanting.

All this to say my opposition to this project is not uninformed, knee-jerk, or equivocal. Providing a Texas-based tax-avoidance scheme the right to threaten what is most sacred to British Columbia, “Splendor Sine Occasu”, makes no economic, social, environmental, moral or practical sense. It is a betrayal of our communities, of the nations that were here before us, and of the generations that will (hopefully) come after. It is a failure to lead and a failure to dream.

I admit that I believed that when Trudeau’s refreshed Canada walked into the Paris meeting and said “we’re back”, we were telling the world that we were ready to lead again. I hoped (dreamed?) we were ready to take a role respective of our technological and economic advantages, catch up with true global leaders, and begin beating our energy swords into plowshares. At the least, we would begin respecting our commitments to ourselves and the world. Instead, it is clear we are going to continue to subsidize the industry that provides all those fragile eggs to Alberta’s wobbly basket. We will subsidize it directly through our tax dollars, we will subsidize it through infrastructure investments like 10-lane bridges that lock a generation into unsustainable fossil-fuel-dependent transportation choices, subsidize it through forsaking future opportunities and risking the ultimate destruction of everything we value in our spectacular BC coast.

It doesn’t really matter if that destruction comes from a single “72-hour spill response time” incident or from gradual and inexorable rises in temperature and sea levels. We have sold our legacy, forgiven our opportunity, failed to find a vision that would allow it to exist.

Justin Trudeau was elected because people saw something akin to a new vision. We had enough of the stuffy old white guy with the 19th century solutions, and were not compelled by the other stuffy old white guy and his 20th century solutions. Dickens and Steinbeck (respectively) had nothing on Copeland and Klosterman. The promise was a new direction from the new generation. Fresh ideas and approaches, more personal politics, dare I say “Sunny Ways”. Traditional ideas like fearing deficits, letting oil companies tell us what’s what, or keeping your sleeves buttoned at your wrists were tossed aside. Canada’s back, baby, with a sexy swagger. We convinced ourselves that we could dream more hopeful dreams, that our ambitions to be something better would be realized.

Alas, before the election ballots were counted, long-time observers were asking how soon the Liberals would course-correct to the right with hackneyed neo-liberal (made so quaint now by a Trump-based reality) policy decisions that blur the distinction between them and the Conservatives they campaigned far to the left of. Campaign left, govern right, stay the course. It has worked for the Natural Governing Party because that’s the Canadian way, and has been since… well, I’m too young to know any other form of Liberal.

They campaign to govern, and govern to campaign. Perhaps under P.E. Trudeau that meant serious discussions about Public Policy, the Role of Government, and the Meaning of Nationhood. In 2016, public policy is a hassle, because it is hard to sound bite and some noisy people or potential donors might not like the results. The need to break promises of last election are an issue only for the crisis communications department; after all, they present opportunities to become promises for next election! Voter cynicism? A political machine this size, if properly greased, can work that to their advantage. For one more cycle, anyway.

When Trudeau II showed up on the scene, many voters jaded by a series of abusive relationships received a glimpse of a new beginning. The honeymoon is now over for people in BC concerned about the environment, about our natural legacy. It is important to note that we are a little late to the game out here on the West Coast.  The honeymoon already ended for Civil Liberty types, as Ralph Goodale seems to support giving rights to CSIS that the Courts denied them making fights over C-51 antiquated. It already ended for human rights activists as selling citizen-crushing machines to brutal dictators became unavoidable in bureaucratic doublespeak. From the stall on electoral reform, to the laissez faire on TPP and the claw-back of public pensions… the reasons for buyer’s remorse are broad and all-encompassing.

Cazart, indeed.

Naturally, we are seeing the same thing here in BC, and it extends far beyond this pipeline (that we know Christy Clark is coyly equivocal about, as she schemes to assure its development as long as she gets a tidy deficit-reducing revenue cut). The same failure to lead / failure to dream leaves us in a place with an economy that is ostensibly the Greatest on Earth, except for the shocking number of homeless, the working poor being made destitute, then the destitute dying of addiction or violence with no apparent support or escape alongside the creeping failure of our public education, public health, and public transportation systems. Even the financially stable are seeing the cost of living creep up through faux-taxes hidden in the costs of basic services while local governments are scrambling to find the funds to putty over the cracks in the social net that has made us a civil society – if not the Best Place on Earth.

It’s an election year, so casual political observers are going to forget about disability claw-backs, about the past-critical housing crisis, about forgotten promises to make schools safe, about privatization of public assets to meet short-term budget goals, about feet-dragging over regional transit funding, about tax breaks for private schools and forgotten promises to provide family doctors. Instead, we are going to hear a few populist news stories about how the Liberals are claiming a lead in housing or education or health care (“It is time to invest”) and we are going to be distracted from the abject failure to provide not only those things for the last 15 years, but any form of public good through their neo-liberal trickle-down economics. Some of us might be convinced they care about us and a brighter future is just around the corner…

That’s the winning formula when winning the job is more important that doing the job. How long until they, too, disappoint us? Will we say “Cazart”?

Curses

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

Been busy, same old excuses: long Council meeting on Monday (update coming!), events in the evening, and of course there was the hijinks of Tuesday night, which sent many of us to a restless sleep.

I vented a bit on Facebook this morning, and it seems to have received a positive reaction, so I may as well plagiarize myself:

The following is heart-felt, and contains offensive language. If that bugs you don’t read it; but I won’t apologise. We need offensive language now, because all the nice talk didn’t seem to work.

To all those well-employed financially-secure comfortably-housed quasi-Christian straight white guys (just like me!) who are dropping into my Facebook feed talking about how Trump winning isn’t a big deal, because the sky is not falling and the people have spoken and yadda yadda… I just want to mention what a self-entitled asshole you are, and remind you that you cannot see the problem because you are immune from the problem.

It ain’t your rights that are going to be trampled by Trump’s promise to overturn Roe v. Wade. It isn’t your family that will be torn apart by Trump’s promised forced migrations. It isn’t your home that will be destroyed by the bombs that will be dropped by Trump and his BFF Putin as they split up the oil-bearing new colonies of their choice. It isn’t your children who are going to drown in the sea or catch cholera in a camp while trying to flee those bombs because of the walls promised to stop them seeking safe harbour. It isn’t you who will be discriminated against, jailed, tortured, because of your religion, your name, or where your parents were born. It’s not your generation that will see the ravages of resource scarcity and mass relocation caused by a failure to account for our carbon emissions. It isn’t your child who will be shot in the street for being black in the wrong place. It isn’t you who will be bullied, intimated, abused, raped, and murdered because of your gender, your gender expression, or who your soul tells you to love. Indeed, this isn’t your problem and your sky isn’t falling. But that doesn’t mean everything is OK.

So why don’t you, just for a few days, do what you did for the last year as this horror was unleashing itself? Shut the fuck up and let people grieve for lost hopes, and go back to watching golf on TV.

That all sounds very negative and despondent, but I was getting those posts filling my feed – “nothing to worry about here” – and every single post was from a guy who fit that description, as do I. I didn’t have the will or energy to reply to them all. Of course, the central conceit is wrong, Trump won’t be President for a couple of months, and even then, his most ambitious promises won’t be realized for months after that. Let’s re-asses the sky fall after that.

We have a bit of time. Let’s grieve for a day or two, then let’s get back to the fight, because it has only become more important. And there is much to fight for, and so much to do.

Today I attended the Civic Dinner in New Westminster, where we thank the hundreds of volunteers that give of their time, their energy, their minds and hearts to make our City run better. Some bring Arts to the City, or help connect the Police to the community, some try to support small business growth, some to advise the City on environmental protection or work to make our City friendlier for immigrants, for the disabled, for the elderly. Community working together like this to support others is part of the fight against those who only turn inward for ideas, and turn outward only for blame and excuses. In New Westminster, we are winning this fight.

The countdown to May 9th has already begun. We have had enough lessons recently that campaigns matter, that getting involved matters, that voting cannot be the only act of democracy we undertake. Whomever you support politically, before you vote for them you should support them with your time, with your money, with your ideas. Politics matter in your everyday life, and it doesn’t take too much involvement to see that affect. I only hope, if you are reading my stuff, that you want to work for and support those who think community includes those who are not like you, those who have different experiences, different histories, different opportunities and challenges. A healthy community is a mixed one, where we accept celebrate what makes us different, and support those who need support the most, regardless of the cost. It doesn’t make us weak, it doesn’t make us poor, it makes us human – the most collective of all primates. This fight can be won, but it takes a little work, and time is short.

Finally (and this is the hardest one), we need to figure out how to staunch this hubristic Fascism already entering the Canadian Conservative leadership race. Some will call me out on taking partisan digs, but the hateful words already arising in the Conservative race have been emboldened by the new Trumpism: there are current candidates calculating how to best bring the Canadian political landscape down to the Trump level, for the fun and profit of their wealthy supporters. We need to stop that from happening.

And I have no idea how we do that. We can say “Don’t be silly, Canada won’t accept that”, but the United States were just as assured 18 months ago. Trump demonstrated you can’t use this “we must shame her /call her out / defy her” response to the faux-rebellion hate rhetoric, because the power in her words aren’t in what she says, but in the reaction of the media, the chattering class, pundits, and all who can be lumped together as “elites” when push this talk to the outside. Critique her straight-on, and you just reinforce her outsider, “straight-shooting” persona. This is Fascism 101 folks, not rocket science.

I don’t know the answer, but we better find it soon. I hope better minds than mine are on the problem. Because if history is any example, the path is terrible. One thing we know about Fascists – once they attain power, it is incredibly difficult to remove them. There is a dimming of the light south of the border, it is incumbent on us, one of the planet’s most compassionate, caring, and giving societies, to shine brighter. Peace, Order, and Good Governance: That is our promise to ourselves, and the world. Keep up the fight.

Dumpster Fire

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

I haven’t written anything about the ongoing US election, which I guess is strange as I am supposed to be a politician, have lots of opinions, and it appears to be the only story that matters. It’s not like I’m disinterested; I watched all three debates, I have been compulsively checking FiveThirtyEight for the last couple of weeks, I have had been in many conversations that veered over towards the dumpster fire election, I have even occasionally engaged with Vlad, New Westminster’s Facebook Trump Fan Extraordinaire. It impacts my life, my planet, I care. I just haven’t built up the will to write about it.

Three days out, this is all I have to say.

Many commenters and pundits suggest that both parties ran terrible candidates. That any Democrat not as universally hated as Clinton would be running circles around Trump, and that if the Republicans had run a more mainstream candidate (insert Rubio, Jeb, or even Romney) then they would be running away with this. I disagree.

First off, it perpetrates this false equivalency notion: that they are both equally terrible candidates for President. We have demonstrably the most qualified candidate in the history of the presidency, a lawyer who spent her career in public service fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, who spent years being not a passive, but active member of the Arkansas Governor’s mansion and White House, who was elected to the Senate and served with huge public support and success, who served as Secretary of State at a time of great conflict. No-one in the country can claim to have a better understanding of what the job of President really is, and what it means, or is as prepared to fill that role. She is running against a blowhard serial criminal and scam artist who doesn’t just lie pathologically, but lives in a universe of his own truths, who has a life-long history of putting his over-inflated fragile balloon of an ego in front of any other consideration, has failed at business, marriage, and friendship more times than can be counted, and displays Fascist tendencies towards the very institutions of democracy, including the vote, the courts, and the media. These are not equal humans by any measure.

I would argue, however, that Trump is the only candidate who would have this level of success against Clinton. Recognizing her complete and utterly dominant resume, he is the only one with the willingness and ability to fan the flames of misogyny and hate that have undercut the campaign. The only one who can tell the only demographic firmly against Clinton – white males – that it is OK to call her a bitch, a whore, fat, ugly and conniving, “Jezebel” if you are of the Alt-Christian Right persuasion, and all the misogynist language and thinking that forms the undercurrent of the campaign.

Any mainstream candidate would have had to disavow that type of language, that type of thinking. They may have tried the dogwhistle arguments about her “weakness” or “lack of stamina” or “bad judgement”, but those are easily refuted with the record, play against the idea that she is some existential threat, and is perhaps too subtle for the low-brow target market. Trump (and the people he surrounds himself with – men and women) are more than happy to let “Shoot the Bitch” T-shirts be circulated at their rallies, to drag out victims of her husband’s alleged sexual deviancy two decades ago to bring into question her competency as a spouse (which is, of course, a metric only applied to women), to fill the minds of lower and middle class white guys who have been victims of long-term stagnation, liberalism and globalization with a list of “others” to blame – coloureds, “Chuy-na”, and women not fulfilling their roles as sexual possessions. This is the base upon which Trump has built his support, and perhaps the only thing more disgusting is the stunned-into-acquiescence mainstream of the Republican Party, who are not willing to take part in fanning those flames, but are happy to receive the warmth. And some, I assume, are good people.

There are other forces this election. People are disenfranchised, have been told for a decade that the country they are supposed to be so proud of is a laughing stock, there doesn’t seem to be much good news on the perpetual-war front, they are sick, poor, and underemployed. The “economy” is no longer serving them, as individuals, with few prospects ahead. It has been a long and winding path out of the flaming crater of the 2008 financial crisis. Of course, it is patently ridiculous to think that the person who has benefitted the most from laissez-faire capitalism, dysfunctional courts, globalization and a corrupted tax system – Donald J Trump – is somehow going to take apart the systems that gilded his world with the sweat equity of the beleaguered American worker. The American voter may not be smart, but they are smarter than that. Trump’s hate message is not as directed as it could be, but without hatred of Clinton’s biggest crime – being a woman in power – his campaign would have been buried months ago.

I think Clinton is going to win, solidly, but not by the landslide she deserves. She will then be subjected to 4 (or 8) years of unrelenting misogyny and personal attacks while she tries to do the job as best she can within a damaged political system. She will do it with strength and dignity, perhaps lacking the eloquence and charisma of (either) Obama. Like she has for the last couple of decades, she will continue to rise above it all to do the hard work of governance, and those who will benefit the most will rarely feign to thank her for it.

Plans and Promises

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I have had interesting interactions on social and traditional media this week, and it got me thinking about plans the City makes, and where those interact with promises made by politicians. I am new to making the latter, have made the former for a long time, but haven’t really thought about the differences. let me see if I can tie this together into a cogent discussion.

It started with this Facebook post:

Hey Patrick, Earlier this year you spoke of the pedestrian and cycle improvements that were soon to be built along Braid. What does soon mean? You spoke of right away, seems you’ve become just another politician, promises promises…….

I have a slightly vague memory of having this conversation, as it was around the time some public consultation was being planned around this project. I knew the project was coming along because we talked about it at ACTBiPed, and because I attended an event as Acting Mayor just before the last Federal election where an MP from and adjacent riding announced some federal funding to help fund the project.

So I replied to the Facebook post with a link to the project page (above), and slightly cheekily followed with “no promises, though”, because it seemed to me the poke about “promises” by my inquisitor was slightly tongue-in-cheek. Or maybe not, as another person took slight offence to my flippant attitude, requiring yet another response by me that provided more detail, proving once again that Social Media is a terrible place to infer nuance.

The longer version of my response is that the project is coming along, but this isn’t really something I would think of as a “political promise”. I don’t think anyone ran for Council supporting or opposing a plan to put green separated lanes on the north side of Braid Street to connect to the United Boulevard bikeway. However, some of us were more supportive than others of the Master Transportation Plan for the City adopted just before the election (I don’t think anyone NOT supportive of it was elected). I am not only still supportive of it, but am supportive of rapidly implementing the active transportation measures included in that plan, including filling some of the important gaps in our bicycling network.

When it comes to building certain connections, though, that is really a complicated discussion between Council, staff, our Advisory Committees and other stakeholders, and is influenced by the capital budget and various priorities. This particular project was seen as a good chance for some senior government grants (applied for and won), represented an important gap, and was generally seen as ready to go. Drawings were created, some cost estimates done along with some public and stakeholder consultation. Capital budget was set aside in the 2017 year to do the works. My “supporting” this plan was a very minor part of the plan coming together for 2017, even as one of the members of a seven person Council.

That said, I can see a couple of potential issues that may prevent this from happening on the existing timeline. If you look at the poster boards from the Public Consultation, you will note that the map has red lines on it. Those are property lines, and a large part of the project is within rail property. I understand that we have agreements for these properties, but as we are learning with whistle cessation measures elsewhere in the City, the way rules and agreements work on rail lines is not always straight-forward, and it is best not to be too hasty predicting how those agreements will work out when it comes time to roll out the excavator. The second issue is, of course, the upcoming Brunette Interchange project by the Ministry of Transportation. I can’t tell you too much about it because MoT has not yet released their project drawings, but if there are changes in how Braid Street works through this area, we may need to go back to the drawing board. I don’t know the answers to the questions, nor are they completely in Council’s control.

I have every reason to expect this project will proceed in 2017 as planned, but all plans are subject to change, based on the rule of best laid plans. This doesn’t mean we won’t build a safe cycling and pedestrian route between Braid and the Bailey Bridge, it just means that the connection may not arrive exactly as we envision it today, or on that timeline. We’ll stick to the goals, we may need to change the plan. Stay tuned.

As for “promises”, I remember promising to support the Master Transportation Plan, to support and work towards implementation of the transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure improvements in that plan, I promised that stakeholders like HUB and the members of ACTBiPed would be involved more in planning these types of projects. I also promised I would do everything I can to be the most open Councillor about talking about how decisions around the Council table are made – mostly through this blog and other Social Media, hoping that openness would build more trust in the work City Hall is doing. If we make a decision you don’t agree with, I hope you will at least understand my motivation for making that decision, and hopefully you will be angry at me for the right reasons.

Which brings us to this week’s editorial in the Record, where they are critical of Council’s approach to the Q2Q bridge. They are right that the current situation is a let-down, and that, ultimately, Council has to own that disappointment. I may (cheekily) offer surprise that they claim to have known all along it was impossible to build the bridge, and didn’t bother to point that out to anyone, even when previous engineering reports suggested it was well within scale of our budget, but that is not the part of the editorial that made me retort. Instead, I was pretty much with their argument until this:

It doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out that Queensborough’s project would be low on the priority list. In fact, you just have to drive down Ewen Avenue to know that Queensborough often gets the short end of the stick.

I have to respectfully disagree with the suggestion that this Council ignores Queensborough as some sort of political calculation. That the Editor used Ewen Avenue as an example suggests to me they have not been to Queensborough in some time. Ewen Avenue is undergoing the single largest road improvement project in New Westminster in the last decade. Two years into a three-year $29 Million upgrade, the entire length of Ewen Avenue is going to be a brand new transportation spine for all modes. It has been a big, disruptive construction project, but the end result is becoming visible now, and will change how Ewen Avenue connects the community in a pretty great way.

If the issue is priorities, the Editor may be reminded that the Q2Q plan was part of a series of DAC-funded projects that started with $6.2 Million towards the $7.7 Million renovation of the Queensborough Community Centre, including the opening of the City’s first remote library. It included another $5 Million in Park and greenway improvements for Queensborough (including the South Dyke Road Walkway, Boundary Road Greenway, Sukh Sagar and Queensborough Neighbourhood Parks, and a pretty kick-ass all-wheel park). These were the first thing done with DAC funds, not a low priority.

Just two weeks ago at Council, we turned down capital funding support for a Child Care facility in Uptown because we placed the need in Queensborough as higher priority, and dedicated our limited child care funds toward filling that need. That isn’t “the short end of the stick”, that is including Queensborough’s needs along with the other neighbourhoods of the City when directing limited resources towards where the need is greatest. This council has a record of fighting (and winning!) to keep Queensborough in the same federal riding as the mainland, and a record of fighting (and losing) to keep it in the same provincial riding. Queensborough has never been an afterthought at the Council table during my time there, but a neighbourhood we continue to invest in and be proud of.

The situation for Q2Q sucks, there is no way to dress that up or say it more elegantly. A set of projects was conceived a decade ago, and of them, this project does not appear workable in the current form. The work is ongoing right now to determine how the remaining DAC funds can best be used connecting Queensborough to the mainland, and I am hoping a new and viable plan will come along soon. Call the current set-back a broken promise if you must, but the decision to not move ahead with a $40 Million option right now is not proof of a City disregarding one neighbourhood, it is a matter of understanding our fiscal limits as a City of 70,000 people with dreams perhaps bigger than our reality.

UBCM 2016 – Part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It’s been three days of UBCM 2016, and I hardly have time to write my thoughts. Somehow, Langley City Councillor Nathan Pachal has pumped out several really great blog posts about the talks he has been to. I see him at every event, and have shared food and drink with him, (we are conspiring together on something…), so I have no idea where he finds the time, but it is worth while reading if you want to get a different view of some of the talks. Actually Nathan’s Blog is good reading any day, he is a smart guy.

So back to me, and that weird existential angst I was expressing around climate change last post. It has not abated, as I have attended talks on other subjects, and have had some scheduled face time with a few Ministers and Members of the Opposition, but I was also given the gift of inspiration.

After climate change, the biggest issue facing BC right now is housing, at every level.

During the Large Cities Forum, we had presentations on the remarkably progressive approach that Maple Ridge took when trying to address a long-standing tent city issue. There was much discussion of the social aspect of this type of homelessness, and the importance of giving people franchise over their space, and building trusting relationships between the residents of the tent City and the people trying to keep the tent City safe, and hopefully move people to a more tenable living situation. They had people who had been living outside for a decade or longer, and some who were simply terrified of the idea of going into a building.

There was a transition from this discussion to talking about the health aspect of homelessness, and those difficult to house. Although there are many ways for a person to become homeless, the most common are one (or a combination) of three: Youth aging out of foster care, people leaving the criminal justice system, and people coming out of hospitals after longer stays. I all three cases, they have been disconnected from their support systems, have nowhere to go, and end up on the street. They generally have barriers to receiving even the most basic services. They often can’t get basic healthcare at a clinic because of a variety of barriers inherent in the system.

There are good people working on this issue, and many good ideas about how to prevent the worst tragedies. St. Paul’s is working on a transition program, where people leaving Emergency Room care, if they don’t have a home to go to, can go to a temporary shelter on the hospital grounds. They are more likely to heal, they are less likely to return to emergency any time soon, they are more likely to get access to detox or mental health services they need, they are less likely to die on the street.

But, again, it is frustrating. With all the good work being done by local governments, by Health Authorities, and by various provincial agencies, it isn’t enough. We are constantly reminded that BC has the greatest economy in Canada, and we are the Greatest Place on Earth, but too many of these people (and let us not forget that point – these are people, citizens of our province as deserving of dignity and safety as you or I) are simply being left to rot. A crisis we are nibbling around the edges of, but certainly not treating as a crisis.

There was also discussion about the other end of the housing spectrum – run-away housing prices. Short version is economists expect prices to continue to rise medium-term (even allowing for possible “short term corrections” of 10-30%). Single family houses in across the lower mainland will double in price in the next decade or so, if the trends are to be believed. The wind went out of the room when that was suggested.

We were then refreshed by a very entertaining talk by Tom Davidoff about how we are doing it all wrong. Housing prices are going up 30% a year, while housing supply is going up 2%. This has resulted in the ridiculous situation where 95% of the households in Canada simply do not have the income to buy a home in Vancouver, or as he put it, the City has banned 95% of Canada from living in it. His solution? Build denser neighbourhoods, especially row homes and townhouses (not so surprising), and facilitate that by massively increasing property taxes (!), and giving the province the power to override local parochial densification concerns (!!). Naturally, the message that Mayors need to raise taxes and give up control over zoning was not what local governments wanted to hear, but it was entertainingly delivered.

I also went to a workshop on contaminated sites stuff and invasive species that will probably not interest the readers of this blog in the least, but was really interesting to me.

I had a good chat with representatives from AirBnB before Vancouver announced today that they are going to take on regulating AirBnB. I was already aware of the approach taken by Nelson (and some of its strengths and weaknesses of that approach), and am ready for us in New West to have the conversation about short-term rentals. There are more than 300 listings on AirBnB in New Westminster, far more than the number of hotel rooms in the City. The trick is how to develop a regulatory environment where responsible homeowners who respect their community and neighbourhood can operate legally, while preventing unscrupulous, unsafe, or otherwise problematic operators. How do we address the larger concerns in the community? Much to do here.

Finally (for this post), we were treated to an excellent and inspiring Keynote by Dr. Samantha Nutt, who is one of those heroes that make you wonder how they can even exist in this world or cynicism and short-term thought. She is the founder of War Child, and organization that provides various types of aid to children impacted by war in the worst parts of the world. She provided the inspiration, and some great wisdom.

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I can’t get into the length of her talk, it was full of absolutely heart-rending stories of war and suffering, and yet somehow full of hope and laughter about why we do what we do. She joked about being shot at, threatened, illegally detained, made sick with rashes she could not identify and afflicted with plagues that have her doubled over in the worst bathrooms in earth, and yet her husbands’ job is even worse – he is a politician. This is a bit of a ridiculous pander to a room full of politicians, but her point was that there are many people doing things around the world, big and small, trying to make positive change, and all of them, all of us, question whether we are making progress, whether the fight is worth it. And there are people trying to stop progress, who we have to outwit, outlast, and out think.

This was actually a message I needed to hear, because too much of UBCM has been about small steps to address big problems, recognizing that we are not making enough progress, and there are serious structural barriers – sometimes actual people – who are in the way of this progress. Why do we continue to work against these forces?

“Leadership is a test of endurance, and at least we aren’t just spectators”

There was another message in her talk. We, here in Canada, sitting on our fat asses at a conference, are complicit in these wars on Somalia, in Darfur, in Eastern Congo. By selling them the arms they need, by buying conflict metals that fund those weapons sales but keep our smart phones (and this Blog) running. You can hear her give a different talk with similar messages here. I honestly cannot believe I am lucky enough to share the planet with a woman like this.

So go out, do what you do, make positive change.

The TransMountain Panel

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

For reasons probably not relevant to this discussion, I attended a couple of the “Trans MountainPipeline Expansion Project Ministerial Panel” public meetings in Burnaby and Vancouver.

For those who have not been keeping track, here is the TL;DR background condensed to a single run-on sentence:

An American tax-dodge scheme called Kinder Morgan bought a 50-year-old oil pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby, and now wants to replace and twin it, tripling capacity, and shipping mostly diluted bitumen for quick export via daily Aframax tankers berthing in Burrard Inlet, which previously would have required an Environmental Assessment, but the Harper Government changed the rules in 2012, giving an Oil and Gas Regulator/Booster in Calgary called the National Energy Board the ability to review and approve the project, which they unsurprisingly did in May 2016 despite significant local and First Nations pushback, causing the new Trudeau government to say “hold yer horses, Cowboys” and strike a new “ministerial” panel that will be doing further stakeholder, community, and first nations outreach to “seek additional views that could be relevant to the Government’s final decision on the project”, a panel whose validity is being questioned by many critics, as its Chair was, until recently, working with Kinder Morgan.

I went to the meetings as an observer, not a presenter, so this post is made up of my impressions of the presentations of others. You may not agree with them (me?), and although the public meetings are pretty much wrapped up now, you can still take part by sending your comments or filling out a questionnaire here.

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The roundtable I attended in Burnaby took place in one of those familiar hotel convention rooms, all crystal chandeliers and pukey carpets, which was essentially empty for most of the day, with many more seats than participants. Right from the get-go, it was hard to determine what the actual plan for the day was.

The morning session was meant to feature “Environmental NGOs” (I counted three), with two later sessions featuring “Local Governments” (a total of four, including New Westminster, who were well represented by City staff). There was no fixed agenda, so there was no idea who was presenting when, and any member of the public was apparently able to sign up and get their time at the microphone after the pre-designated speakers were finished. There was a polite request that each of the speakers would have 5 minutes, but there was no timekeeping, and some presenters went on for better than a half an hour.

In her introductory remarks, the Chair instructed the audience that this was meant to be an “informal dialogue”. They appeared to have perfectly nailed in the “informal” part, but the dialogue was distinctly lacking. In three sessions totalling almost five hours, I can recall a single instance where a Panel Member asked a follow-up question of a presenter. Even when directly asked questions by presenters, the Panel members seemed unable (unwilling?) to answer, but more on that later.

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The Vancouver event was crowded and went well into the night, where the lack of any formal organization led to the inevitable. There was a significant presence of the patchouli and gorp crowd that, as usual, had a frustratingly hard time keeping on topic. Concerns were expressed about everything from Site C to salmon farming to LNG. At one point, a gentleman came to the microphone cradling what was, apparently, a plastic doll swaddled in a blanket and finished his talk with a short a cappella folk song of sorts. Perhaps I missed the point. No, I’m almost positive I missed the point.

However, there were also several compelling arguments offered, including the failure of the NEB process to address significant concerns with this project, questions about the ability of the Federal Government to respond to a significant spill in the Canadian half of the Salish Sea (the risk of which will clearly increase if this project is approved), and questions about how Canada will meet its stated GHG emission goals if Oil/Tar/Bituminous Sands developments proceed at the pace outlined in the business case for this project. The one question hanging over the entire proceeding was clearly “Why?” How is accelerating the extraction of a non-renewable resource for rapid export in the “National Public Interest”?

It was the sparsely-attended Burnaby event that was actually more interesting. Mayor Corrigan of Burnaby, love him or hate him, can be a hell of an effective orator, and he was on his game this day. He spoke clearly without notes for about a half hour, and despite his reputation for, uh… being outspoken, he was respectful and calm for the length of talk. He started by talking about the history of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, and how 50 years ago Burnaby consented to a cooperative-owned pipeline to supply the 5 refineries around the Burrard Inlet because of the important local jobs and domestic supply needs it represented. He also spoke of the history of Burnaby gifting Burnaby Mountain to the University, then buying large portions of it back 40 years later to protect the conservation area that had become so important to Burnaby and the region.

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He went through how his Council and Staff evaluated the Kinder Morgan proposal to “twin” the pipeline, primarily for export, and in comparing the significant costs and limited  offsetting benefits, determined it was not in the interest of the City. They then learned about the National Energy Board, a non-elected body in Calgary made up of (mostly) former energy executives, who would be tasked with reviewing the project to determine if it was in the “national public interest.” They identified fairly quickly that there is no national plan to develop our hydrocarbon industries or to manage our non-renewable resources over the short or long term, making determination of how any project fit within something called the “national public interest” a very difficult thing to determine. At no point was there an explanation of what the “national public interest” was, nor a discussion of how one would measure it. For a Municipal Politician, whose job it is to plan and make those plans a reality, the complete lack of planning or even a clear definition of a goal, was shocking.

Further, going through the process with the National Energy Board, the City of Burnaby (along with most everyone else involved) soon discovered that the hearing process was cumbersome, chaotic, and lacking in some pretty fundamental protections that a formal hearing should have, such as the ability to cross-examine witnesses and test the evidence that has been presented to assure it was credible and had merit. In challenging the process, Burnaby discovered that Kinder Morgan’s legal fight was funded by a special surcharge on the pipeline use approved by the NEB, a source of funds not available to local governments and other stakeholders in the process, and that the NEB was not made up of a broad representation of citizens from across BC and Canada who can fairly evaluate what is reasonable to the general public, but are drawn from within the Oil and Gas industry and friends of the (at the time) oil-soaked federal government.

After discussing some of the technical and safety concerns the City of Burnaby has, and the inadequate responses to these risks provided in the “conditions” to the NEB approval, Corrigan compared these to the inferred benefits: maintaining some jobs in Alberta to accelerate the removal of harder- and harder-to-extract oil reserves so they can be exported faster for the benefit of a few multinationals,with little or no long-term evaluation of Canada’s long-term petroleum needs. Are the needs of future generations included in “the national public interest”?

He summed up by calling the Panel out for what they really are – a political body comprised of two former politicians and a former Deputy Minister – and the review for what it is – a political process to correct the fundamental flaws of the NEB process that Prime Minster Trudeau recognized prior to his election. In summary, the Mayor quoted the Prime Minister, stating “Government can grant permits, but it’s communities that grant permission.”

He then put a period on that point: “Well, we don’t.”

I was also fortunate to have heard Kai Nagata from the Dogwood Initiative ask some rather pointed questions to the Panel, for which he received respectful non-answers. To paraphrase heavily from my memory, the exchange went something like this:

Q: Who was invited to speak? Is there a list of which organizations were sent invitations? What efforts were taken to get the word out to impacted parties, so they can take time from their summer schedules to take part? Was there any vetting of the people who wished to take part?
A: There is no list. Everyone was invited. Anyone can speak.

Q: So you are taking anything from anyone. How are you vetting the information received? With no opportunity for cross-examinations, how are you assessing the strength of evidence? What measures are you taking to determine if the voices you are hearing represent a fair cross section of stakeholders, or the general public. What processes have you brought to weigh the evidence you have received, and where is that process explained?
A: We are here to listen, and we will produce a report summarizing what we hear.

Q: There does not appear to be any official recording or video of these hearings, nor does it appear that official transcripts are being produced. Some presenters have provided you written materials, how will the record of these hearings be entered in to the official record, and how with the public know what transpired here? What process exists to assure the public input is fairly reflected in the report you provide to the Minister, or that the written evidence you have received has been vetted for accuracy?
A: We are here to listen, and we are taking notes, there are no official transcripts.

Q: So with no formal process to solicit input or assure the presenters are representative of the community, no vetting of the information you hear, no process to determine the validity of evidence, and no official record of what transpires – how will this Panel, to quote the Prime Minister “restore public trust and confidence in Canada’s environmental assessment processes”?
A: Hrrm…

I don’t mean to come down hard on the Panel Members. They were hastily called up and thrown into a hastily assembled process, with a mandate that may appear simple, but suffers from a lack of definition or process. Their job is to report to the Minister with some ideas or impressions of whether this project, a narrowly defined pipeline delivering and extra 600,000 barrels a day of products to the Pacific Coast primarily for export through Burrard Inlet, is in the “National Public Interest.” Unfortunately, they have not been provided the tools to define, never mind measure, such an ethereal concept. This “informal” and apparently ad-hoc process is not going to get them any closer to that definition.

Nor will this process restore the public trust in the way the Prime Minister anticipated. The only question remaining is whether he has the political courage to stop this project based on this failure, because it has not moved him any closer to receiving a mandate to approve it.

What do you do?

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I’ve been at the City Councillor thing for a year and a half now, long enough that I have to stop referring to myself as “the new guy”. At some point, I have to stop blaming / giving credit to the previous Council for everything going wrong / right in the City. I suspect (hope?) the steep part of the learning curve is now behind me, and I start directing more of my learning towards the problems I want to see solved, the opportunities ahead. It is also long enough that I should be able to answer the simple question “What do you do?”

I have tried, over the last 18 months, to report out on this blog some of the mechanics of City Council, as it was my goal when running to open up the process a bit, and try to do a better job explaining the sometimes-incomprehensible decisions Council (and the City) make. Recognizing many in the City will disagree with any given decision made by Council, I wanted to at least provide enough information so that they know what they are disagreeing with, and not rely on the few very vocal boo-birds in town who assume a decision is bad only because this Council makes it.

However, this post isn’t about that, it is more about the actual day-to-day duties of a person you pay $40,000 a year (plus Vehicle Allowance!) to represent you, whether you voted for them or not. So here is my summary of the job.

*This is a good time for one of my disclaimers about how everything I write here is my opinion and my viewpoint, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the ideas or opinions of any other members of Council, who are, believe it or not, individual people with their own ideas and biases. Like the rest of this Blog, this is not the “official position” of the City or any entity other than myself.*

Council Meetings:
Council meeting days happen about every two weeks on average. In the spring and fall we meet more often, and we more time off in the summer and around Christmas. The schedule is flexible around work load and stat holiday schedules, but we have about 26-30 meetings a year.

Council meeting days are comprised of a Closed Meeting and an Open Meeting, only the latter of which you see on TV. About 10 times a year (the last meeting of most months), the Open Meeting is coupled with a Public Hearing. We also, at times, have Committee/Taskforce meetings (more on that below) and Council Workshops on these Mondays.

A long Council Monday can be 12 or more hours, with breaks for lunch and dinner. The portion you see on TV is only the Open Meeting and Public Hearing part. On any given meeting day I am at City hall at 9:00am, and typically wander home sometime between 9:00 and midnight.

Council Prep:
We cannot show up at Council Meetings unprepared to discuss the business of the day. Our schedule on Monday is typically pretty stuffed, and we cannot hope to learn enough about the issues on which we will be discussing during that time. On the Friday before the meeting we are delivered (electronically in my case) our “Council Package”. This contains the staff-prepared reports and background info we need to put discussions in context. The Package varies in length, but is typically about 1,000 pages when Closed and Open agenda items are combined.

My practice is to get take a glance at the Package for maybe an hour after I get home from work on Friday or first thing Saturday morning. This allows me to get an idea of what is on the agenda, to determine if it is a 700-page or a 2,000-page week, and to do a first pass over the topics being discussed. From that I can plan out my weekend to assure I have enough time put aside to review at the detail needed, and do any other research I might want to do in order to understand the issue. That is usually when I decide if I have time to do a bike ride on Sunday or attend a Saturday function.

Typically (and this varies quite a bit), I spend about 8 hours on Sunday reviewing the package and taking my notes. My notes form the backbone of the Blog I will eventually write about the week’s Council meeting, but more importantly they create a framework around which I organize my thoughts on the agenda items. This is an old trick from studying during my University years, but I find that if I write a summary of a topic I am trying to learn, it forces me to learn enough to summarize the important points, and to understand what questions I need to have answered yet. Often, you don’t know what you don’t know until you try to write it down.

I print those notes out, so you can see me at Council using my computer screen (where the agenda and reports that make up the Package are) and written notes, along with the extra papers that we receive on Council Day, typically supporting reports that weren’t available Friday, presentation materials, or other relevant documents. My desk is a mess.

Committees and Taskforces:
Like the rest of my colleagues, I serve on several Committees and Taskforces for Council. These each meet anywhere from once a month to once every second month. Most meetings are in the later afternoon, mid-week, after I get off my regular job, and meetings typically last about two hours. With my being on three taskforces and four committees, this adds up to an average of about one meeting a week during the busy months, but not many in the summer (except occasional exceptional meetings, like the Transportation Taskforce last week, and the ACTBiPed next week).

In these meetings, Council members, staff, and stakeholders work through issues, ideas, programs, or proposals, and (hopefully) provide guidance to Council to make better decisions. Prep for these meetings varies greatly, but rarely takes more than an hour. Follow-up on some of the issues that arise at these meetings, and some of the extraordinary meetings, tours or other activities involved with the work these committees are doing takes quite a bit more time.

Community Events: There are various types of community events, some you have to attend, like the Civic Dinner where we thank committee volunteers, some you attend to show support to organizations or people doing good work in the City, some you attend just because they are fun.

This is a challenge for any Councillor’s schedule. We get a lot of invitations, and cannot hope to attend everything. I try to be careful about stretching myself too thin, and end up missing a lot of events I really want to get to. I try to respond to every invitation and send a decline if I cannot make it, but scheduling is an ongoing challenge, as is managing my work and Council calendars while still finding some time to remind @MsNWimby that I exist. The job does not come with a social coordinator, and every calendar app I can find for my phone is worse than every other one. I’m still working on this part…

Constituent Services:
This is a big, but pretty loosely defined group of activities, and each Councillor can make their own decision about how they manage this, and how much time it takes. This is another part of the job that “expands to fill the space available to it”.

Sometimes, a person complains to you about potholes on their street, or the noise from their neighbor’s wind chimes. Sometimes they call you to ask for help with a business license issue, or to complain about a development in their neighbourhood. Sometimes people complain about unfair enforcement of a Bylaw, while others complain about lack of Bylaw enforcement. Some people just want to be heard and the problem acknowledged, some want you to fix things for them.

I try to take an approach to this based on a few principles. I am not there to help people get out of Bylaw requirements, to get their stuff pushed to the front of a line, or to help them get around a process that exists. I am really conscious that procedures and policy exist in government, and that we have professional staff working on directives from Council as translated through their management – they should not have to deal with an individual Councillor coming and telling them how to do their jobs. That said, if a resident or business owner feels that the process is unfair, or that they have received treatment form the City that is not in keeping with City policy or good customer service, I am happy to talk with management at the City and (this is important) get both sides of the story and figure out what went wrong.

It is a delicate balance. Sometimes my job is to help explain to a resident or business owner why things are so bureaucratic and irritating, and why the Bylaw is written or enforced the way it is. Sometimes staff do mess up, or processes are developed that don’t really work when put into practice, and someone needs to facilitate a better outcome for everyone. I don’t see my job as advocating for either party in a conflict like this, but as a mediator trying to figure out an outcome that works best for the City and the Residents. And occasionally the approach required is to work with the Mayor and Council at the executive level to fix a process or a system that is not working for the residents and businesses in the City. Deciding which of the three is the right course when hearing from a complainant is a tough job, and something I am still learning about and developing my skills at.

Communications:
I receive dozens of e-mails a day and a few phone calls a week from residents or businesses in town. I try to respond to all of them. I fail.

When I first got elected, I dreamed I would answer them all promptly and personally, but reality has set in. Some (like the every-couple-of-day missives from the hateful racists at Immigration Watch) go directly to delete. Some I am just cc’d to, and am not the best person to answer, so I usually wait to see if a more appropriate person responds before chiming in. Some raise interesting and complex questions that I need to put a bit of thinking too before I respond. Some scroll off the first page, and I get back to them a week or two later and feel bad about not having responded right away. Some, I just don’t seem to have the time to keep track of.

So if you wrote me an e-mail, and I was slow to respond, please don’t take it personally, and don’t feel bad sending me a reminder e-mail. I will get back to you eventually. Unless your comments are full of hateful racism or other abusive language, in which case I’m likely to just ignore you and hope you go away. In that case, I guess, you can take it personally.

This other stuff:
Writing this Blog is, to me, a really important part of how I do this job. It takes a lot of time, and is almost always done after 10:00 on weekday nights. Summarizing a Council Report can take a couple of hours, depending on how many items on the week’s agenda require extended explanation. I find free time to write pieces like this wherever I can (in this case, I am sitting at one of the little desks on the Queen of Alberni crossing the Strait of Georgia while @MsNWimby enjoys the blue sky on the sun deck).

Tracking the local and regional media (including the social media) is also an important part of the job whose hours simply cannot be counted. Keeping track of the goings in the City, of the trends in the region, of Provincial and Federal politics as it relates to our City, is vital if we hope to make good decisions for the City. This includes a fair amount of general interest research, following great local sources like Price Tags, or global sources like StrongTowns along with reading great urban and economics leaders from Janette Sadik-Khan to Umair Haque.

Nothing in New West is new, we don’t have completely unique challenges, but the same challenges as other Cities and regions have had. Learning what from their successes and failures is the best way to train myself to make better decisions.

I have been at this for 18 months, and parts of it are getting easier. I am now better able to judge the amount of my Saturday and Sunday I need to spend reading my Package, more of the “background” in my Package is familiar to me, requiring less review. I have a better idea who in City Hall to call and get a question answered. The trade-off is the expanded time I spend doing that last part – the constant learning to empower myself to make better decisions and dream bigger about the future of the City.

Now if I can only get ahead of my e-mails and get my scheduling figured out…

Vacancy Tax

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

Homes in the lower mainland are getting to be too expensive for people working in the lower mainland to afford. There are few who would argue this point. It was all fun when we watched the $1Million line march eastward across the City of Vancouver, then the $2Million line, but now single family homes in New Westminster are regularly selling over $1Million, we cannot bring on alternate housing types (townhouses, row homes, cluster homes) fast enough, and high-rise condos are selling out before the ground is broken.

It is a classic market run, and people are both afraid to get in and afraid to miss the boat. This is a situation ripe for unscrupulous profiteers inside and outside of the semi-regulated Real Estate industry to start the raking in cash. However, those skimming value from an opportunity cannot be blamed for the problems that created that opportunity. Free enterprise, folks.

As with any long-emerging crisis, there is rampant speculation by people ready to pin the problem on their pet bugaboo, though few deny the complexity. I get weekly e-mails from racists telling me it is an immigration failure. People speculate (on thin data) about the number of vacant homes being held for investment. Efforts to bring more stock on line run up against “character of the neighborhood” arguments in Kerrisdale, on Commerical Drive, in Queens Park. Following on 20 years of dropping rates following the peak of the 70’s recessions, we have now had more than a decade of bargain-basement mortgages, making the borrowing of money to buy a house (or houses) the only sure investment for a generation. We have in-migration (foreign and domestic) pushing for more supply, limited physical area for growth, and a complete failure to fund regional transportation infrastructure that would improve the accessibility of regional housing options. Disruptive technologies and economic drivers (AirBnB, remote work, etc.) are pushing against zoning, taxation, regulation, and any attempt to manage a shrinking supply. Equally disruptive is the generational change caused by baby boomers cashing out “wealth” accumulated during an unprecedented post-war economic growth cycle while voting to strip apart the social contract that made it possible before it can be passed forward to the next generation. At the same time, real wages have been stagnant, failing to even keep up with a decade of record-low CPI increases (“it’s not a depression, and it’s not a recession. It’s an unprecedented kind of breakdown: a divergence, regression, implosion”). On top of this, the federal government, then the provincial government, got completely out of the affordable housing business, leaving local governments and a patchwork of social service agencies attempting to fill the gap with none of the resources to do the job.

It’s a mess (as was that last paragraph!) and it would be ridiculous to claim that any one of those alleged causes is the only cause. But a ridiculous reactions to unsupported claims is the current BC governance style, so here we go.

The BC Government has managed, for years now, to avoid addressing the root causes above in any meaningful way. To be fair, not all of the issues leading us to this place are provincial jurisdiction, but developing strategies to keep housing in our communities available and affordable is 100% provincial responsibility, thanks to the Constitution Act of 1980. However, the story has now become enough of a front-page annoyance that the Premier has decided it necessary to be seen to be doing something.

In the most knee-jerk reaction possible, they have called an emergency session of the Legislature to change the Vancouver Charter to allow the City of Vancouver to charge a tax on vacant homes. This is, in their defense, one of the short-term measures speculated upon by the Mayor of Vancouver, but no-one can seriously believe this is a going to solve the housing problem, nor is it clear how this spit into the ocean warrants an emergency summer sitting.

Not surprisingly, Mayors from across the region are perplexed about how this approach (which will only impact the City of Vancouver proper, as they exist under separate legislation than every other City in the province) will help or harm the situation in their housing markets, and the pressures they are feeling now that the problem has clearly become a regional one. But that is not the only problem they (correctly) point out.

The venn diagram that connects “vacant properties” with “non-resident” owners, “investment” owners and “foreign” owners is a muddy one – which makes applying a punitive tax to any one group a complex problem for the province or a City. Of course, we have no idea if the proposed approach will actually have any effect on the real issue at the core of this, which is (do I have to remind you?): homes are becoming uncomfortably expensive relative to wages. Realistically, we can be pretty confident it will not be a solution, but will cause repercussions across the region we cannot predict.

We don’t know what legislation will be introduced next week, but we know there is little chance that emergency legislation passed in a brief summer session will provide the complex suite of governance tools required to address the multiple causes of this emergent situation – one that has been growing for several years. This shameless pandering to headlines, this feigned effort to look like they are “doing something” after years of providing no discussion of real solutions, this duplicitous offer to allow a local government to tax their way to a solution while remaining somehow above it all (and at the same time blaming local government taxation for worsening the problem!) should be resisted as a point of principle, and called out for the bullshit cynical lack of governance that it is.

The Opposition and every Mayor in the region should resist this short-hand legislation to change the Vancouver Charter, and prevent it from being expanded to the rest of the province. Speculative and punitive tax measures should only be applied as part of a comprehensive plan to address the actual governance problem, not the headline problem.

ASK PAT: Car allowance

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Mark asks—

Hi Pat

A question regarding the recent council compensation recommendations, specifically the car allowance. Given the city and council’s vocal support for increased transit spending, reducing traffic in the city and it’s occasional touting of how great the city is in terms of transportation mode share, why would council (well, you at least since we’re on ask Pat) support a flat payment for automotive use?

Given their advocacy on the matter, council members should be leading by example on this. The city has excellent skytrain and decent bus service, and is well connected regionally. Why not give councilors transit passes to cover their travel?

Of course not all commitments can be met by transit, and yes councilors should be free to expense appropriate mileage (or taxis, rentals, car shares, etc) related to their duties. But simply giving councilors money for their automotive expenses runs counter to what the city and council is pushing for.

Appreciate your thoughts and the time to reply, and thanks for keeping up the blog.

Yep, I agree with you. The “car allowance” is a stupid idea for a City of 15 square kilometres, with the densest transit coverage and highest alternative mode share of any community outside of downtown Vancouver, and a Master Transportation Plan that takes priority away from the private automobile as the primary form of transportation. We have a Mayor who walks to work, one Councillor who never drives and a couple others (including me) who make it a point not to use a car to get around within town. A “car allowance” makes no sense.

Of course, it isn’t a “car allowance”, or even the HR-preferred vernacular “vehicle allowance”. It is a “transportation allowance”, as we can use it on any mode we like. We can top up a Compass Card, hire a taxi, gas up our car, get a Modo membership, or buy replacement tires for my bike.

Of course, it isn’t even a “transportation allowance”. It is $100 we get to spend on whatever we want. We are not required to provide receipts or justification, so this is little more than a taxable top-up of our salary. As a Councillor, I will get $1,200 more per year above the “base salary”, and whether that adequately compensates me for the transportation cost related to my job is kind of secondary (which makes it different than our other expense allowances, because they are actually backed up by policy guidance and we need to provide receipts and get them passed by HR, just like any expenses you might accrue in your regular job).

This issue arises from the once-every-term review of Council remuneration, which is always a sticky point. I don’t want to get into a long discussion about how much elected officials should get paid here, because that is pretty philosophical topic with wide differences of opinion, and wasn’t your question. However, it is apropos to discuss what a good governance model is to determine how much elected officials get paid. The decision we made this spring was, in my look at it, more about approving the process than the numbers.

When it comes to local government in BC, it is up to the Mayor/Councillors to determine their own pay. This is a direct conflict-of-interest that is not only permitted under the provincial law regulating local governments, but required by it! In that context, good governance requires that Mayor and Council don’t make a capricious decision and write their own cheques, but that they permit the professional staff in their HR and Finance departments to determine an appropriate process to determine appropriate compensation. The best we (and by “we”, I mean citizens and elected types) can hope for is that the process is transparent and defensible. Where both transparency and defensibility break down is when one or more elected official tries to supersede or run around that process, be it for personal or political reasons.

The process we have in New West is that every 4 years, HR staff compare the wages and benefits of elected officials in New West to those in comparable cities – a collection of other Lower Mainland municipalities, excepting the biggest (Vancouver, Surrey, Richmond) and the smallest (Bowen Island, Anmore, Belcarra) and do regression analysis on several statistics (population, budget, size of Council), with the guidance being to keep our Council firmly in the middle. Between those every-4-year adjustments, annual increases are indexed to CPI. You may suggest a better system, but HR has explained their rationale through reports, find it defensible and transparent. The process made sense to me, in that I could understand the rationale, could follow the numbers and do the math, and it made sense, so I supported it.

As for the “vehicle allowance”? I don’t like it, think it is a bad idea for all the reasons you state. However, respecting the process that provides good governance makes it hard to pick and choose the results of that process. HR and our external consultants determined what constitutes fair compensation based on a policy guideline that was, essentially: do what other similar Cities do. Apparently “car/travel/transportation allowance” is now part of that. We could have rolled it into the regular wage and compared across the municipalities and come up with a wage number that is $1,200 higher per year, but HR determined that making it a taxable expense makes more sense from an HR perspective.

I’m not sure raising a stink and pulling apart that process is the appropriate way to manage my discomfort about the symbolism of a “Car Allowance” in 2016 in New Westminster. How do I do it without calling into question the process – one that I have essentially been at arms-length from to reduce the conflict of interest created by the legislative structure – and not opening the door for a very political discussion with everyone making whatever adjustment suits their specific desires, political position, or special idea? I would argue of all the decisions we make as a Council, this is one where our personal politics need to be ignored, and the decision made (effectively) by staff.

So I don’t really have an answer to the “Car Allowance” question (at least not one I could come up with and propose in a reasonable timeline), but it is clear my personal political opinion is that it is a bad idea. This is something I am thinking about as I think our entire organization at City Hall needs to do a better job walking the walk when it comes to Transportation Demand Management. We are asking residents and businesses in the City to adapt to a more sustainable transportation system, but are slow to adopt progressive change as a corporate entity. Obviously, that argument is easier to make if us elected officials take a position of leadership. I’ve put this issue on my To Do list, and hope to have a better answer for you prior to the next time we go through this exercise.