The “Likely Spam” call was automated call from my cardiologist’s office reminding me of an appointment later this week. It is a phone call appointment where your Doctor phones you at a prescribed time, and you talk….on the phone. As opposed to coming into an office and physically sitting there in front of the Doctor, who if they felt like it, could take your blood pressure, or notice you had lost weight or put on weight, or looked a little pale. But our medical professionals have continued the pandemic protocols while most of the world is acting like the pandemic is over.
Have you had a phone appointment yet? From the same folks who brought us Covid-The Movie. You remember, the pandemic that changed our lives in so many ways?
Have you noticed how many companies still continue to use Covid as an excuse for bad customer service?
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Enter the first letter from either their first name or last name.
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Speaking of Robo calls, I got a call last week at work in Coquitlam for Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart. It wasn’t actually a robo-call, as there was a human on the other side. But their ability to communicate was so limited, I thought maybe there is a point to having robo-calls.
I woke up at 4:00 am on Saturday. On a weekend. I went into the spare bedroom, not wanting to wake my wife. I did my daily Wordle, checked Facebook, tried without success to do the NY Times Letterbox word game. I was sleepy, but bored, and wide awake, so I did the unthinkable. I said, “I am a citizen of a Vancouver. We have a civic election coming up in October. I should acquaint myself with the candidates so I know who to vote for.
Easier said than done.
Mayor Kennedy Stewart, of non-robo- call fame is running for re-election. There are six men and one woman running for Mayor, with all the present Councillors also running for re-election. *with the exception of Colleen Hardwick, who is running for Mayor with the Ghost of TEAM party.
There are at least 10 different parties, who are fielding 47 candidates. I may have added one or left one off. With so many candidates for the 10 slots, it could be interesting. And exhausting for voters. Remember 2018 when the city abandoned the alphabet in favour of a randomly chosen ballot?
The city conducted a random draw to determine the order that candidates for mayor, council, park and school boards appeared on the city’s ballot sheets. You literally had to copy out a blank ballot just to prepare to vote.
The Vancouver city council at the time voted to end the policy of putting candidates names on the ballot in alphabetical order over concerns that candidates with names that started with A, B and C had an advantage.
This year we have 2-3 corporate law and order free enterprise parties, and about 7 centre-left of centre progressive green parties. Apparently there is no unifying issue on the left or right that brings these candidates together. How to explain the balkanization of Vancouver. The extreme fragmentation is a result when no one agrees on anything, other than splitting the vote.
This splitting of the votes give almost anyone a chance to win. Past divisions were geographical with leftists on the east side, and corporate interests on the west side. Civic parties were essentially farm teams for the provincial parties, who respectively are farm teams for the federal parties.
If I were a scout for the majors, I would say this may be a good year for the roses, but it is also a piss poor year for prospects.
Since 1966, the centre right Free Enterprise NPA alternated with the leftish Vision/ NDP, Federal Liberal independents. For the past 14 years, the progressive left of centre parties have run the city.* In the last election, the longest iteration, Vision, a progressive NDP farm team, after 8 years of Vision, city voters almost wiped off them off electoral map in 2018. Vision was started by Larry Campbell. His chosen heir was Jim Green, who lost a close election to Sam Sullivan, who liked to have a drink in the morning ( his words not mine), who in turn lost to Gregor Robertson, the Juice King, the Bike Path guy, the guy who said he would end homelessness by 2015, then didn’t. He did manage to closed off the street he lived on to traffic.
In 2018, the left vote splintered into Greens, One City, COPE, and none of them had a Vision large enough to envelop the rest. Our parachute Mayor Stewart Kennedy, had no party of his own, but did have his record as a Federal NDP MP for Burnaby. Which gave him special powers to speak to the Federal “powers that be.” Unfortunately for Vancouver, no one in Ottawa wanted to listen to Stewart.
Kennedy put together his own party this time, presumably because none of the other parties wanted him. But then again, they are not running anyone against him, so there is that vote of confidence. His party is called Forward Together, which sounds a bit awkward and “passive progressive.” Awkward Together is not to be confused with the Progress party, who is led by former-Premier Christy Clark’s ex- husband Mark. Mark wins the hyphen contest.
The Ghost of TEAM is an interesting collection. Their favourite position is abstaining in their search for the elusive middle. They reach out to grab the soft gooey centre. But haven’t they heard that the centre does not hold? They are up against Mayor Whiny Puss. TEAM hates the mess left by Vision, but their Mayoral candidate is best known for her abstentions, and her lineage, being the daughter of Water Hardwick, who was in the Ghost of TEAM Past. Any Art Phillips fans still alive?
The right is made up of two parties, Classic NPA, which boasts the law and order candidate Fred Harding, a social conservative who got at least two votes in the last election, and NPA Zero, aka ABC, which stands for Anybody But Comedy (Stewart). Which only shows they can’t spell. This time the K sound really is a K. Which may be the only thing certain about Kennedy Stewart. ABC is comprised of all the sitting NPA Councillors, who quit the NPA to sit as independents. Confused yet?
Perhaps I am being too harsh here. All these candidates are trying their best. Well meaning. But seriously, none of the candidates want to talk about how they are going to do to fix the mess.
So what is the average voter to do? What is this particular citizen to do? I have three Facebook friends running. None of them are using social media to post anything that might reveal what they would do if elected or re-elected.
The big issues in Vancouver are as follow:
MONEY. I bet you thought I would say Housing. We are in the midst of a affordability crisis. It ranges from rich foreign buyers and pension funds who buy up housing stocks as investments to people forced to live on the street. Vancouver with its relatively year long mild weather is Canada’s destination spot for Homelessness. There is no lack of developments happening, but no one can afford to live here.
The City blames the (NDP) Province. The Province blames the Federal government (Liberal / NDP). The Feds blames the antivaxxers and their Convoy.
Is it a lack of housing or a lack of ideas? What does it take for all levels of government to take action, and just do the job we so graciously pay them to do on our behalf? The pandemic showed us the kind of mobilization that is possible when government work together to make the impossible possible.
ACTION:
Freeze the salaries of all Politicians, at all levels of government until they
pull their fingers out/put on their Big Boy /Girl pants and work together.No idea is off the table.
Try everything. Try anything. Just try.
Use the city owned golf courses, as Patrick Condon has suggested.
There is lots of city owned land and buildings that can be converted into permanent or temporary housing.
Remodel shipping containers, use the many unused warehouses, convert the empty offices since many people continue to work from home.
Appropriate the empty mansions owned by foreign investors. Try the mansion tax suggested by Jean Swanson.
We have places that may not be suitable for selling, but wouldn’t anything be better than forcing people to choose between run down fire traps or shitty tents on a sidewalk?
And speaking of shitty tents, can we at least set up bathrooms for the current tent city? Where are the public health advocates in all this squalor?
We mobilize for vaccines, but watch untold people die every day from fentanyl.
We need to ban ( or at least severely limit foreign ownership).
The Martin Liberals abandoned social housing back in the 80’s, and we are still suffering from that bad decision. For a start, we must shame the unshakable Federal Liberals to reverse those bad decisions.
DRUGS. This city is literally drowning in drugs. Harm reduction advocates say we need more drugs, but more is not the panacea. We need better. Better drugs that are safer and free. Since the time of Philip Owen, harm reduction has been the mantra. I agree that possession of drugs should not be a crime. But dealing drugs should still be a crime. Still it’s a three-legged dog without adequate funds for rehabilitation. We need resources to give people a chance to quit when they want to get off drugs.
We have become inured to the face of drugs. Mix that with rampant untreated mental illness, extreme poverty, and homelessness, and you have Vancouver.
It is sad, and it should make us all very angry. Angry at all 3 levels of government, as they abdicated their responsibilities many, many years ago. Angry at ourselves for not being angry enough to demand an end to this situation. Remember we are the government. We elect these folks to represent us. And we pay the handsomely for the privilege.
It is not getting better. It is getting worse.
Let’s face it, the whole world is on drugs. I am on drugs, but they are legal drugs to help with various health issues. Well, same thing here. These people have numerous health issues. We force them to live on the street to rob and steal for contaminated drugs. As much as we all say that homelessness is wrong, we are not creating enough affordable homes for these individuals.
All levels of government have abandoned this group of people. We get hand wringing and finger pointing. Some political parties want the police to “clean it up”. But I’m not hearing any solutions as to where these people would live.
The right just wants them gone, on a spectrum ranging from Harding ( soft Duterte) to Sims, who may make a mean bagel, who doesn’t like taxes, and who thinks the Park’s Board should be abolished. Then there is Colleen Hardwick. She has the answer. Abstain.
To Mark Mariessen, who thinks more food trucks may be the answer.
And the current Mayor and council. Are they responsible for this mess?
Or does the responsibility lie with the voters.
Still, who to vote for?
People can’t live in food trucks, or on bike paths. And we can’t just say let them eat bagels.
This is brilliant Dennis...