ABC snowflakes vote to chill dissent in Vancouver
ABC snowflakes vote to chill dissent in Vancouver
City Council amendment is a threat to free speech and non-profit sector
Municipal news round-up
Stifling dissent: How a City Council amendment sent a chill through the City’s non-profit sector
The new city council, led by the Chip Wilson funded ABC majority, took steps to stifle dissent in Vancouver by passing language that aims to put a chill on anyone associated with civil society, arts and cultural organizations who may apply for City grants in the future.
According to a judiciously even-handed opinion piece by Dan Fumano in the Vancouver Sun, the actions of Vancouver council suggest a concerning trend towards muting criticism of public officials by non-profit social service providers who are applying for grants.
Although all of this year’s grants were approved, ABC city councillors expressed concern and made comments that signal potential plans to overhaul the City’s grant system. ABC Councillor Peter Meiszner introduced an amendment directing city staff to report on how to require grant recipients to communicate in a respectful manner with city officials, citing a program manager for Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, who had made the following criticism of Mayor Ken Sim: “I know that the Chinese Canadian community is really excited about the first Chinese Canadian mayor. I just want to point out that just because somebody looks like you doesn’t mean that they are actually going to take care of you. That’s the unfortunate truth.”
Councillors from ABC, OneCity and the Greens voted unanimously on the following amended amendment.
The rationale, that anyone who may apply for a City grant should be subject to the City’s respectful workplace guidelines, is absurd on its face.
Not to mention that the previously-cited quote about Ken Sim is obviously nothing like abuse, but rather a run-of-the-mill fair comment about an elected official.
In the council discussion on this issue, two ABC councillors, Meiszner and Brian Montague, made it pretty clear who was in their crosshairs. Montague, in particular, grumbled about some of the grant-receiving projects associated with the City’s agenda to promote Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. At one point Montague snarled, “Can someone tell me what a decolonization toolkit is?”
Despite the admonitions towards civil society, Vancouver City Council approved over $6.2 million in grants to “community-led initiatives that promote equity, safety, and inclusion as well as renters and SROs in Vancouver.” Setting aside the grammatical confusion of the City’s press release and implication that renters and SROs are somehow not promoting equity, safety, and inclusion - these initiatives are welcome investments into the organic initiatives that seek to improve lives in our communities. But if ABC’s discourse is anything to go by, next year may see a very different allocation.
ABC’s actions, and the votes in favour of the amendment by Green and OneCity councillors, are concerning, as criticism of public officials is an essential component of a healthy democracy. This incident highlights the importance of allowing citizens to criticize public officials.
ABC council’s appeal to the city’s respectful workplace policy can easily conceal a more authoritarian and oppressive ideology which discourages criticism of leaders and promotes the idea of unquestioning loyalty and obedience to those in power.
Amanda Burrows, the interim Executive Director of First United Church, summarized what’s at stake in an interview with CityTV: “Especially when we’re in the non-profit sector like we are, in social services, not just providing the services, but also trying to advocate for deep social change, we have to speak truth to power, we have to keep our elected public officials accountable.”
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Broadway Corridor: No bike lane, no ‘pace-of-change’ for demovictions
Despite the overwhelming majority of speakers who addressed City Council this week advocating for protected bike and roll lanes on Broadway, the ABC majority voted against bike lanes and in favour of a staff report recommending widening sidewalks only as the Skytrain extension to Arbutus transforms a part of the City’s prominent east-west artery.
The wording holds out potential for bike lanes at some undetermined future date. But given the severity of the climate crisis, and the fact Broadway is currently torn up to make way for Skytrain construction, it makes no sense to kick this issue down the road another decade or two. Vancouver now lags far behind other world cities in terms of transforming public road space away from the dominance of the inefficient, dangerous, and highly-polluting private automobile.
Cycling and multi-modal mobility advocates, local residents, and opposition parties including OneCity and the Greens blasted ABC’s move.
On another Broadway Plan issue, ABC and OneCity voted together to overturn City staff recommendations for area-specific ‘pace-of-change’ guidelines for redevelopments in which tenants could be displaced from existing apartment buildings.
Advocates of accelerated market housing development argued that existing tenant protections will prevent displacement, while tenant advocates and the Green Party argued that there would be a lack of adequate ‘swing sites’ to temporarily house displaced tenants. The Vancouver Tenants Union, for its part, didn’t make a show of force at the council meetings relating to this issue but plans to continue organizing tenants in threatened buildings throughout the Broadway corridor.
Report: Police Union allegedly obstructed justice in the death of Myles Gray
CBC published a blockbuster investigative report this week that should result in major consequences for one of ABC’s key endorsers: the Vancouver Police Union.
“Four Vancouver police officers accused of misconduct for failing to take any notes after the encounter that killed Myles Gray claim they did so at the direction of the Vancouver Police Union, according to an investigative report obtained by CBC News.
The allegations, which implicate both the current and former president of the union, are contained in a 278-page final report prepared by Richmond RCMP Sgt. Robert Nash on an order from the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC).
One constable who was on the scene when Gray died on Aug. 13, 2015, told the investigator that ‘he was directed by the union not to make any handwritten notes while waiting on the seventh floor of VPD headquarters after the incident,’ according to the report, dated Feb. 24, 2022.”
Read the full story here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-myles-gray-union-interference-allegations-1.6795234
City Council, bear spray, and the discourse of ‘Public Safety’
Council also approved a recommendation to regulate the sale of bear spray, including prohibiting sale to minors and requiring retailers of bear spray to record details of each sale. Per the City report recommending the measures, restricting and recording sales is necessary as “a proactive measure to increase public safety and potentially reduce the number of violent offences involving these products in Vancouver, particularly by youth.”
The report notes similar laws were passed in Surrey, Chilliwack, and Port Coquitlam in 1998, 2021 and 2022 respectively. According to the report, Chilliwack RCMP data shows a 49 per cent decrease in the number of case files for incidents involving bear spray in 2021 compared to the previous year. Recent police data from Surrey indicates that their municipality experiences far fewer incidents involving bear spray annually compared to Vancouver, with 158 fewer violent offences in 2022.
While this regulation superficially appears to be innocuous, it signals a set of priorities for this Ken Sim-led City Council: fear-mongering in the name of “public safety.” The methodology of connecting a 1998 Surrey law with fewer incidents of bear spray-related violent offences in 2022 is certainly questionable. No doubt City Council will continue to massage evidence of violent or so-called “anti-social” behaviour to enact more restrictive laws, increase police powers, and decrease police accountability.
Tax Relief for Property Owners; Increased Costs for the Rest of Us
Earlier in March, Council approved a pilot property tax relief program for small businesses, allowing small businesses to be exempt from “paying disproportionately high taxes due to development potential.” The relief is limited to five years. It is the property owner - not the tenants - who must apply, though the benefits must be deferred to the tenants if the exemption is made.
The problems with this approach seem obvious: the temporary nature of the relief simply gives property owners to defer tax responsibility for up to five years while accruing the benefits of increased assessment values. Once the exemption is up, the property owner can sell for even more profit. Nothing about this exemption targets the underlying issue of speculation and rampant market forces driving up property prices and making affordability increasingly distant.
National Round-up
Nothing for housing in Canada’s federal Budget 2023
Finally, the recent announcement of this year’s federal budget is bad news for cities like Vancouver struggling with an out-of-control housing crisis. The budget includes a big fat nothing in terms of dedicated funding for urgently-needed new affordable housing.
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