PhillipsVille
Well.
Here's something interesting from the Vancouver Sun's Cheryl Chan:
Vancouver councillor Colleen Hardwick plans to seek the mayoral nomination of a new municipal party.
Hardwick, who quit the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in April to sit as an independent, announced Wednesday she has joined TEAM for a Livable Vancouver and now represents the newly-formed party on council...
{snip}
...The new TEAM, named after the original The Electors’ Action Movement (TEAM) founded by Hardwick’s father and three-term Vancouver councillor Walter Hardwick and former mayor Art Phillips in 1968, will put Vancouver residents and its neighbourhoods first, promised Hardwick...
Vancouver councillor Colleen Hardwick plans to seek the mayoral nomination of a new municipal party.
Hardwick, who quit the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in April to sit as an independent, announced Wednesday she has joined TEAM for a Livable Vancouver and now represents the newly-formed party on council...
{snip}
...The new TEAM, named after the original The Electors’ Action Movement (TEAM) founded by Hardwick’s father and three-term Vancouver councillor Walter Hardwick and former mayor Art Phillips in 1968, will put Vancouver residents and its neighbourhoods first, promised Hardwick...
Will the resurrection of the party that Ms. Hardwick's Dad helped to build the first time around turn out to be viable?
Will it carve votes away from the NPA's Mr. Coupar and ensure a K. Stewart victory next fall?
Will it give Marky Mark's mayoral candidacy a wee bit of wiggle room to move up through the cracks that have developed in the center-right 'round here?
Honestly, I'm not enough of an insider to know the answers to any of the above for sure - but feel free to weigh in if you have an opinion and/or an insight.
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I would be re-miss if I didn't mention that Sean Holman is coming back to British Columbia...Something tells me that Mr. Holman and Norm Farrell will be crossing paths with some regularity on the climate policy beat (which I reckon will be a very good thing indeed).
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5 comments:
There is also theNPA's former mayoral candidate, Ken Sim, who is planning to seek the mayoral nomination for A Better City, which is another new party launched in April.
That makes 4 folks already running from the right of Kennedy, in a city that always divides votes very evenly in half. Hence, if Kennedy can't take a plurality for the victory, then he needs to leave politics the next morning.
The real battle(s) is/are going to be fought for the spots on the council, as well as afterwards when the highly fractious batch of winners has to come together and try to govern the City (along side a weakened but victorious Kennedy). The entire machinery can be expected to start grinding, jamming and failing to function finally. Meanwhile, the powerful administrators will step into the void and seize on the opportunities to do as they wish--which could be any number of things, sometimes in league and sometimes quite independently.
Should be a wild ride for the City and its inhabitants!
Great insight - thanks FF!
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F.F. maybe on to something there. Certainly the staff will have to run things if the politicians can't or won't. Cant really say Kennedy has been running things. He's like a figment of our imaginations. He's not real. He isn't leading or running the city, he is just occupying a chair.
It would be interesting if the left of center ran a candidate against Kennedy. He isn't that good. It might be easier to defeat him than running as some one on the right with currently 4 and perhaps even more.
Will the new TEAM work? doubt it because there isn't a real Walter hardwick or Art Philips. Remember when TEAM was "created". city and the game players aren't the same, the city has changed, the citizens have changed. Downtown Vancouver is a disaster in areas and can be written off. The residential areas are multi million dollar homes and though not all living in them are rich, just bought a few decades ago, the city is no longer geared to those who work there. Not even those who work for the city can afford to live their, such as police, nurses, doctors, office workers, engineers, teachers, etc.
Vancouver will become a ghost town. There is nothing there to draw people any more. Its great for tourists or if you can afford to live there, but as to the rest, just de list it. Don't even know anyone who shops there any more. Its pretty much all south of the river now. Between taxes and rents small businesses have left and that was before COVID. shopping is better on the North Shore or south of the Fraser. How did it all get that way? I'd blame the various mayors and councils. None of the players had or have a vision for the city. At one time south Granville was a great shopping area but approx. 8 yrs ago you started to see empty shops. Yaletown, for the past couple of years you can just drive in and get a parking spot. Most of the fun shops are gone.
Now good old Marky running for mayor, yikes. From the back room to the front room, wonder what has brought that on. The salary is O.K. but some how there most likely is another reason. In my opinion he may be the candidate the developers will support or the casino owners, etc but I do not see that man doing anything good for the city of Vancouver or its citizens. the word carppet bagger comes to mind and his ex. If he is going to give the city what his ex gave the province, people might want to join other former citizens of Vancouver who went south of the Fraser and over to Vancouver Island.,
The T.E.A.M. moniker is a good start as for many, will bring memories of happier days and better civic government.
Hardwick is no fool and has Vancouver, etched into her genes, something most Councillors do not.
I would suspect prof. Patrick Condon will be advising her on the housing issue and she will be able to to eviscerate the current housing issue blundering at all levels of government.
She is also an anti subway type and with the costs for the Broadway subway escalating past $3 billion and a threat of cut-and-cover on the horizon and the Cambie St. cut and cover still in peoples mind, could cause a voter shift to T.E.A,M.
By the way, subways tend to sterilize surface businesses along the route, or so says the Toronto Transit Commission, something that the Vancouver Engineering Dept., TransLink and the Mayor's Council on Transit did not convey!
As well, subways do not take cars off the road, never had and only built on transit routes where ridership on a transit route exceeds 15,000 pphpd, yet the Broadway B-Line offers a mere 2,000 pphpd! (
P.S. contrary to the VoC Engineering Dept., In Europe trams can carry in excess of 20,000 pphpd, thus the threshold for building a subway is even higher, past 20,000)
Convey that message and the B.I.A.'s and various other groups may have an electoral rethink.
And for the NDP types, Horgan's pandemic election was against an extremely unsuitable Liberal leader and was not a knock out blow as many in the NDP would have us believe. Horgan is enjoying the trappings of office too much and has become premier Photo-op the 2nd, with the ever devious worm tongued Meggs running the show.
Kennedy Stewart or Mayor Dithers is growing in unpopularity and shows that the NDP types do get quite comfortable with high office, colonial style and the '22 civic elections may turn out to be a blast of post pandemic vengeance on part of the voter.
Are the stars aligning for a Hardwick win and the return of T.E.A.M.?
Maybe but the tea leaves definitely do not predict an easy win for incumbents in Metro Vancouver in 2022.
Must be that park by permit motivator?
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