FRANCES BULA
Sun
Crime and Safety: This is one major thorn in the side of otherwise utopia Vancouver that can get residents going, and all the parties running know that. The police crackdown at Main and Hastings accelerated an already noticeable trend of drug dealing and street disorder spreading to other nearby neighbourhoods. Grow-ops, car thefts and home break-ins affect every neighbourhood.
2. What will vancouver look like in 2010 when the Olympics arive? Vision Vancouver’s Jim Green is pitching a city that is leading the way with model projects such as the Woodward’s development and South False Creek, which combine development with environmental and social goals. The Non-Partisan Association’s Sam Sullivan warns that Green’s projects are too ambitious and need to be scaled back.
3 POVERTY AND ADDICTION DRUG : Guess what? The Downtown Eastside didn’t get fixed in three years. Homelessness, panhandling, and drugs continue to be serious problems in the city. The supervised-injection site took some people off the street, but the far more difficult issues of prevention, expansion of treatment and getting supportive housing for mentally ill and drug-addicted people need aggressive leadership from the next council.
Election Information
The past three years were a rollicking ride for Vancouverites. The tired old regime was overthrown, a new party was swept in, and the city got national attention for its indefinable celebrity mayor and bold experiment with North America’s first supervisedinjection site for drug addicts.
This election, the choices are more complex and more daunting. The city is heading towards the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will bring both welcome and unwelcome changes.
The Downtown Eastside and its problems of addiction, poverty, crime and drug-dealing are still with us, with hotspots throughout the city. And voters are faced with complicated choices about who should lead them in dealing with those issues.
The left has fragmented into two parties that have many of the same goals, but are barely speaking to each other. The right has remade itself, but not everyone is sure what it’s remade itself into.
The most active public campaign so far has come from the new “centrist” Vision Vancouver party led by Jim Green, closest ally of outgoing mayor Larry Campbell. Green is promising to continue the Campbell revolution that began under the Coalition of Progressive Electors’ banner.
Specifically, that means carrying out the city’s two most ambitious projects in half a century.
One is the redevelopment of the Woodward’s department store into an economic starter engine for the Downtown Eastside. The other is the development of Southeast False Creek, which will house the Olympic athletes’ village, as a model of urban environmentalism.
Vision’s platform also covers everything from more social housing to free wireless Internet to better transit to economic development.
COPE also promises to carry out what was started in the past term and, like Vision, advocates for better housing, transit, and environmental goals. Added to that, it has said it will push for a streetcar line and greenway down the Arbutus rail corridor.
On the other side is the remade Non-Partisan Association, headed by veteran councillor Sam Sullivan. So far, the party has put its emphasis on three things.
One is crime, the unpleasant underside of Vancouver’s otherwise glowing image. Sullivan has promised community courts and a crime commissioner.
The second is money, with Sullivan criticizing the COPE/Vision council’s spending and its use of the city’s property endowment fund to create low- and middleincome housing in Southeast False Creek.
The final one is leadership. Sullivan has spent the past couple of weeks attacking Green’s style and ambitious goals, saying he’s a divisive leader who won’t be able to get anything done if he and his fractured party are elected and that his pet projects are too rich for Vancouver’s blood.
The two mayoral candidates appear to have reversed traditional Vancouver politics. Green has support from developers, police and business groups, while Sullivan has made a name for himself as an advocate for liberal drug policy that includes giving out prescription heroin to longterm addicts
