Because It's 2022: My #vanpoli Election Guide
Awash in candidate bios? Can't differentiate between the party and the person? Trying to find some logic to guide you through the upcoming vote?
My 2022 Vancouver election candidate spreadsheet—people, parties, and priorities
Advance voting started this past weekend. Despite having some candidate ideas, I was largely unprepared to vote. I realized that what I needed was a tool for organizing the most important factors for my picks for Vancouver mayor, council, park board and school board: values and affiliation.
So I built a spreadsheet.
I know, I know, but hold that for a moment. There's some merit to my madness, and you don't need to be a Microsoft Excel guru.
First, I built it in Googlesheets (it's free! it's web-based!), and the file itself is protected so nobody can edit it and screw it up. In fact, you can only do three things with it - look at it, filter & sort it, and print it out.
Why not use City of Vancouver's Plan Your Vote?
I did - it was the source of all my data, especially candidate priorities (aka values) and their parties (if any). But it was hard to really understand who a candidate really is vis-a-vis their party. Are they in conflict at all? Is this really a vote for a party and not necessarily a person? The city’s tool doesn’t really give me a way to pull back from any one candidate and get some objective context.
What about these priorities?
The city asked all candidates to list their top three priorities—you might call them policy objectives, ones which the candidates, if elected, would pursue. To me, these civic and somewhat personally-driven priorities basically equate to their values.
Candidate profiles are a great way to truly understand Vancouver politics.
Whether you or I consider these priorities that the candidate could actually do anything about is something else entirely, much in the way we always end up (even if only implicitly) forgiving elected officials for, at the end of their mandate, failing to deliver on their original campaign promises. But putting it in writing up front as a way of vying for my vote also risks turning away others. It’s a double-edged sword.
So all we can both do is take the wording, the phraseology and all the meaning it imparts—in five words each or less—very seriously. And all I can do, therefore, is put it all through some sort of textual analysis, without trying to make a Master’s thesis out of it all.
No promises though, eh?
What the spreadsheet shows
Not a lot, but it does tell a bit of a story about the direction city hall may take.
We basically see the top three priorities of all candidates lined up in a table, where we can compare them and look for patterns—between the people, and within and between the parties. I believe that in any election, the partisan affiliations of the candidates are as relevant as the qualities and ideas of the candidates themselves, and only with the two factors considered together can anyone really avoid resorting to abject guesswork at the ballot (or sustaining the energy to click through the city’s tool).
Why parties really matter again this election
The possibility of a majority caucus on Council, Park Board, or School Board is incredibly consequential; majorities can make unilateral changes to policies, investments, and decisions like development permits, which then result in the public services, amenities, and works that impact citizens like you and me.
Creating more social and non-market housing, shifts in the pace and scale of housing densification, zoning and development policy changes, police funding, drug supply and access, Indigenous rights and reconciliation, the climate, public education, and (of course) transportation issues—the power of a majority vote in any of these civic bodies imbues partisan candidates with the responsibility to reconcile their personal values on precisely these civic values with party loyalty and membership dynamics.
When there's alignment and unanimity on issues in a party—or potential division between the party and one or more of its candidates—voters need to know. We at least need to have an idea about these things, something to inform our opinion. The consequences for the city are too ignore the information candidates give us about what they, and their parties, consider important.
The city's Plan Your Vote guide provides the information, but it’s not 'at-a-glance' for the 137 candidates—there’s a lot of weird moving boxes and scrolling to be done.
In addition to the spreadsheet, I wanted to share some interesting patterns I found, according to the values expressed and by the parties and their candidates, and then to provide my voting slate.
Consolidating the Priorities
Candidates were free to submit their own wording for the three priority items, up to 5 words each, to the city’s election office. There were many common themes, but slightly different phrasing, so for ease of 'crunching' the values, I consolidated and in many cases simplified the wording. For example:
Affordable housing became 'Housing - affordability', a priority shared by many (popular priority #2), but one of many closely affiliated housing-related values that needed differentiation. So there's also 'Housing - rental' (ie. rent control, lower rent, rental protections, etc), 'Housing - market' (ie. home values), 'Housing - non-market' (ie. non-market housing support, social housing, etc), and just plain ol' 'Housing' (when that was all the information provided)
Safety, school safety, safe communities, and other related values became 'Public safety' (popular priority #1)
Fixing the permit process and eliminating red tape were folded under 'Core services'
I used my best judgement for dealing with neologisms such as reconcili-ACTION (reverted to 'Indigenous reconciliation', with the assumption that, in theory, this covers policy and subsequent actions), and overly specific priorities that were common with other, over-arching themes, such as Lifeguards and swim lessons ('Water programs'), Restore Stanley Park ('Stanley Park'), and Food systems in schools ('Food security' for a school trustee candidate)
I also used my best judgement when leaving some priorities as-is due to lack of acceptable substitutes, such as Belonging, Transparency, Clean air, Outdoor education, and Healing.
It was essentially a keyword project—who shares my values according to keyword? Whose keywords feel like a Top 20, not a Top 3? It yielded some interesting results.
My values, my priorities
First and foremost for me, it's a vote about my values, and who reflects them in their top 3 priorities.
Given what science tells us about the world we live in, and how the world we live in determines our safety, health, and prospects for the future, and also given the fact that I think of our city as comprised not just of me but of we—close to 700,000 Vancouver residents—I'm most concerned about climate and the environment, homelessness, and food security.
My concerns for the climate, and the air and water quality that sustain our environment and all our lives, align with those of the climate scientists working on the UN Environment Programme.
My concerns about housing encompass affordability, availability, and the politics of neighbourhood inclusion/exclusion, but for me nothing is more important than the housing insecurity—specifically homelessness and dependency on impermanent shelter—that currently pose a threat to the lives of thousands of Vancouver residents.
And, of course, food security should be concerns to everyone, even those who believe they have what they need now and forever. It may not always be so, unless we have robust civic policies to ensure equitable access to food.
Of the 137 candidates running for public office in Vancouver, 29 share these priorities with me among their top 3:
#vanpoli 2022 candidates who share my priorities.
5 of 29 Independents (1 mayor, 2 council, 2 park board)
5 of 10 Green (3 council, 1 PB, 1 school board)
5 of 12 OneCity (2 council, 3 PB)
4 of 9 COPE (3 council, 1 PB)
4 of 10 Vision (2 council, 2 PB)
3 of 7 Progress Vancouver (3 council)
1 of 7 Forward with Kennedy Stewart (council)
1 of 16 NPA (council)
1 of 3 Socialist (SB)
Only four candidates—Adriane Carr (Council, Green), Tom Digby (Park Board, Green), Maira Hassan (Park Board, COPE), and Michael Wiebe (Council, Green)—share more than one of my priorities in their own top 3.
Major Party & Candidate Priorities
Of course, the values I prioritize are not going to be shared by all Vancouverites, and similarly not by all parties. I need to know what priorities the candidates are holding out to the voting public,; because of the power and influence of the political parties in Vancouver, I started with the, alphabetically by party name.
It was illuminating.
ABC Vancouver
First, the party formed by 2018 mayoral runner-up Ken Sim, cast off by the Non-Partisan Association, and now home to other former NPA candidates and incumbents. At 19 candidates, ABC has the largest slate, and it's pretty clear what they stand for. In Council, it's public safety, a response to fears of lawlessness, violence, disorder, and the like. Affordability is #2, though the single word does not demonstrate a sensitivity towards housing un-affordability, or simply a nod of the head towards inflation more generally. And sustainability could mean anything—environmental, economic, social—throw us a bone, ABC!
For parks, it's building things - community centres and park structures, most likely. Followed by that unintuitive pairing of fun and safety - what would that mean? Accessibility rounds out the priorities, a nod to wheelchair ramps, and perhaps ongoing claims that more people need better access to their cars in parks.
In schools, individualization is commonly defined as adjusted pace of learning to meet the needs of each student, a laudable priority, assuming this is not a coded word for something else. And inclusivity means all students are accepted as equals.
ABC gets top marks for consistency, though failing marks for individualization - you won't get personalized priorities here, only a solid wall of sameness.
Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE)
The historic party of the socialist left provides a variety of priorities, reflecting their socialist roots and freedom for members to swing a bit. Rental housing looms large, as do other values related to raising up the poor and middle-class, such as living wages, food security, reconciliation, meals in schools, and free transit.
There are also values associated with the most controversial civic policies - tackling the tainted drug crisis (ie. safe supply), decolonization, and active transportation in parks. Gasp - that means bicycles! High marks for variety, a manageable slate, and a majority of women and female-identifying candidates on their slate.
Forward with Kennedy Stewart
The party with explicit shout-out to its leader (as if he's the replacement of a former, much beloved and possibly dead lead singer, like Queen) takes an all-in approach to priorities as well, focusing the candidates on housing affordability and mental health and addiction. It's probably meant to bolster the mayor's assertion that concerns about violent crime and vandalism will not be assuaged by more police, but by treating the root cause - poverty, affliction, and personal trauma. It's not unreasonable, and hey it's probably even true, but truth and logic have not been known to count for much in this city.
His council cohorts were seemingly also allowed to find their own third place values which...seem strangely well-suited to addressing the balance of almost every other issue available, including many taken up by opponents. (Except, of course, public safety.) It's a smart approach, and the question is whether it's too smart by half, considering the new party's apparent aversion to going straight for Council majority.
No parks or school board candidates, huh? It's very different from the approaches of their ideological brethren OneCity (slow and steady start-up) and Vision Vancouver (subtle, creeping recovery). If it works, Kennedy is king.
Green Party of Vancouver
If a lock-down, uniform approach to priorities raises suspicions about some parties's true intentions, then I would counter by saying the opposite is not exactly comforting. The Greens throw everything at the wall; Green council candidates seem to have a common view, at least, on some obviously ecology-friendly values like complete communities and the climate, and they're also smart enough to be on the housing bandwagon, because popular concerns = votes. Smart - be a one-issue party, but have layers and nuance. hey are more than a one-issue party.
A few candidates, however, seemed to have missed the memo that..."Hey, we're still the GREEN party!" Some candidates don't even address the climate crisis or its impacts at all, and on that basis alone - not to mention one or two past council votes by incumbents that seem to call into question their understanding of the links between housing density, urban transportation, and climate mitigation - I say voter beware.
Non-Partisan Association (NPA)
What can be said about the NPA? On the one hand, the almost 100-year-old party is straying from its roots, having stepped back from its policy focus on economic issues (not a single mention of small business or taxation), and ramped up its ethnic diversity (10 of its 16 candidates used Mandarin Chinese characters as part of their user name registration in the election, most of them not ethnically Chinese - is that enough diversity for ya?).
On the other hand, it remains the party of the solid right. Climate and the environment - possibly the two most important, linked issues of our time - are absent. Their main priority appears to be public safety, including police in schools. Housing affordability, homelessness, addiction, and Indigenous reconciliation merit only a single mention each, notable primarily because there does appear to have been some coordination of priorities. Many candidates give lip service to housing, core services, and the all-important issue of school honours programs, for example, and most seem free to riff on a variety of issues. But in an NPA-led city hall, you'd mainly get more law and order, and a reversion to the conservative mean. Hey NPA, plus ca change plus ca meme chose, n'est ce pas?
OneCity
This has become the darling party of the left, and in four years has become mainstream enough as to be accused of having a cadre of supporters that subject their opponents to the same type of online abuse - or at least severe harumpfing - as they have themselves have regularly received from the right. Progressive bullies like these nasty OneCity candidates ("Help - young people who inherited our problematic systems want to deal with existential threats and change world..and they're doing it at a steady pace, without retreating into neo-liberalism or resorting to gaslighting the next generation into blind acceptance of the status quo! I'm being repressed") have revealed themselves to holding a beguiling mix of well-thought-out priorities, a degree of logical uniformity, and a tenacious, gutsy approach to the most controversial of issues. First, all four council candidates address housing affordability, with a healthy sprinkling of climate concern, Indigenous reconciliation, and other matters that also include...yes, public safety.
OneCity Park Board candidates lead with equity and accessibility, which could be code for stuff that NOBOD- I mean, EVERYBODY would benefit from. And school board? Well my kids are out of the public system now, so I can't really say if a focus on neighbourhood schools really going to help, unless there's also support for STAFF and STUDEN- oh. Well, at least you could be TRANSPARENT abou- oh. Okay. Nevermind, I guess I like OneCity.
Progress Vancouver
This would be your go-to centrist party if you also believed its leader's explicit connection to BC's former neocon-masquerading-as-a-centrist premier wasn't a concern. But it is, and if it isn't, it should be. Oops, I said the quiet part out loud.
In addition to potentially nefarious ties to the worst self-dealing and spin-doctoring of Victoria politics, there are questions about the values and affiliations of current PV candidates. None of this speculation is black and white, whereas the candidates stated priorities are plain for all to see - measured, balanced, consistent, and actually interesting. Small business? Easy to pillory as a knee-jerk populist concern of the past, but in truth small businesses are essential to the lifeblood of communities. Addressing domestic violence? Hell-to-the-yes - only PV has a candidate prioritizing this. Families, addiction, drug supply, and climate?
Quite a set of messages, and all important to talk about and prioritize. If only we could trust the messengers.
The Electors Action Movement (TEAM)
This is what happens when personal vision and benevolence skips a generation. Colleen Hardwick wasn't willing to vote in favour of (or vote at all) during Council's most important motions over the past four years, but she did muster up enough energy to shamelessly position the company for which she serves as director and CEO as a provider of civic engagement and market research services to the City of Vancouver. And despite being elected under the NPA banner, at some point in the last four years she decided to preserve the memory of her father's much-venerated (original recipe) TEAM party by building a far-right version dedicated to her self-styled brand of elitism, preservationism, protectionism, and nativism. Just as she is trying to do to Vancouver itself.
It's impossible to tell from the candidate priorities though - we see affordable housing, police, and red tape as the issues for council, and some well-worn homilies for the rest of the slate (mostly Park Board). Like the NPA, however, you could also judge it by the missing words: climate, homelessness, addiction, Indigenous reconciliation.
Vision Vancouver
The last major party to cover is the last party to hold a majority in Council. Vision was reduced to almost complete obscurity last election, and yet, out of the ashes of 2018 has risen a pretty respectable set of candidates for everything but mayor (smart). The priorities listed are pretty all over the place - not uniform, no overriding trends, some vague things (community! reciprocity! innovation! belonging!), and a significant amount of variety amongst the school board candidates that suggests either they know exactly what needs to be done, or seriously need to get together in a room to discuss.
Either way, for the party that took COPE (or, ah, half of COPE) into the centre and dominated the city for a full decade, it's looking like not a bad recovery.
Other Party & Independent Candidate Priorities
I qualify this section by acknowledging that when people lump small parties together under 'other', it's a good way for them to remain small and other’ed.
That said, all the parties covered above have either incumbents in the field, or are fronting a mayoral candidate alongside multiple other candidates.
I give a big kudos to VOTE Socialist and Affordable Housing Coalition for getting their proverbial shit together and making a bit of noise in this election. These are candidates who could actually win a seat on the basis of their party names alone, particularly amongst disaffected COPE and Vision voters, who wonder what the hell happened to the left.
Last election cycle, there were many independent candidates, and they won - uh - they won nothing. Okay, but they do deserve to be covered, especially because I truly like independents. I don't like losing though, so there's the rub.
Starting with mayoral candidates, I would say "nothing to see here" - mainly due to their obvious electoral prospects - but some of the 10 show a reasonable grasp of the issues. One has some serious electoral experience - Francoise Raunet has run as a Green or independent candidate in just about every federal, provincial, and local election of the past decade. And this marks the sixth election (of the past seven) that Gölök Z Buday has run for mayor, with an historical high water mark of 384 votes! But the sweet, sweet action lies with the two candidates who preferred not a single priority or platform, and did not even offer up a biography. Nice - I don't know you, and I don't want to know you. Just like our current mayor.
There are also 10 independent council candidates. I recognize no names. I can't bear to read their bios. If we had a higher bar for entry, I might feel obliged to invest that time in a serious evaluation but, alas, this is the silly part of silly season - just about anyone can enter, and by that I don't mean to disparage the entry fee ($100), but the nomination criteria (25 qualified electors). Make it 250, and then you'll have my commitment to take this seriously, instead of sillyously.
Same with independent Park Board candidates, though I commend Rollergirl for stepping back from the mayoralty to focus on where we really have problems. LOOK AT ROLLERGIRL'S PARK BOARD PRIORITIES. In my books, she doesn't need a fricken' last name, she needs a nameplate.
Lastly, on school board, we have a problem. And this is where I applied a heavier hand in the wording of the priorities. The bottom line - two candidates are explicitly opposed to education and resources supporting sexual orientation and gender inclusion (SOGI), and one could reasonably be suspected as sharing said opposition. In my humble opinion - as a heterosexual, white male with the privilege that this identity has offered me over 50 years, and as a father of two what-fucking-business-is-it-of-yours-how-they-identify-and-love-in-this-world-but-regardless-if-they-were-still-in-public-school-they-would-absolutely-be-deserving-of-education-and-support, these candidates should fail miserably in their pursuit of elected office.
Comparisons & Contrasts, by Party & Office
Here’s the fun part, and I encourage you to play with the spreadsheet and find your own nuggets about how candidates—and most importantly, how the parties—prioritize and could thus mix and match in some interesting (and possibly terrifying) ways. There are some common values shared between strange bedfellow parties, and some equally remarkable studies in contrast…
First, in the shared values/strange bedfellows category, we have wheezing grampa NPA and scrappy upstart ABC (see graphic #1). The former spurned members who moved to the latter. The latter disavows any connection to the former. But mix their candidates together, and...what do you see?
And then we have the apparent pursuit of affordable housing by the progressive parties (#2), and most notably, by TEAM. If their candidate intentions are to be taken at face value, then they should get along on Council very nicely with...Kennedy Stewart and Forward, Mark Marissen and Progress, and the Vision Vancouver crew. Who would be mayor? Well...it doesn't matter if everyone votes for affordable housing, right? Riiiight???
Now, take a look at how the major party candidates think about Park Board priorities (#3). Some are focused on the big ticket, real world issues like climate, decarbonization, equity, and notably Indigenous rights and reconciliation (notable because of its absence from most recent Park Board debates and decisions)—apparently not expanding on what the Park Board does, but doing what it already does but better, and for more residents. Others, on the other hand, are focused on building new infrastructure, mixing and mingling fun & safety, and accessibility without specifying excluded groups necessarily. Not a single mention of new investments or safety from the left, and not a single mention of climate or Indigenous people by the right. Parks—oh the battles to come…
Lastly, we have the School Board (#4). All I will point out is the potential for great conflict (or comedy, I would really prefer the latter) if the new trustees were to simultaneously push for students to benefit from individualization and also police presence. “OK kids, be who you want to be, and get the learning you need in the way you need it. But we’re gonna focus on one particular method of enforcement of the rules…y’all gonna love it.”
My Values Votes
Here are my picks. Call them my values votes—candidates whose top 3 priorities matched up with my values marked with an asterisk (*):
Mayor and Council
51 STEWART, Kennedy - Forward w/Kennedy Stewart
101 OUELLETTE, Breen - COPE
104 ANDERSON, Dulcy - Forward w/Kennedy Stewart
105* TRUONG, Tesicca - Forward w/Kennedy Stewart
109* MACKINNON, Stuart - Vision Vancouver
112* BONAMIS, Iona - OneCity
114* WIEBE, Michael - Green
129* BOLDT, Lesli - Vision Vancouver
136* SWANSON,Jean - COPE
139* BOYLE, Christine - OneCity
157* ROSA, Marie Noelle - Progress Vancouver
Park Board
203* DIGBY, Tom - Green
204* FRENKEL, Carla - Vision Vancouver
206 PINOCHET-ESCUDERO, Andrea - VOTE Socialist
207 LIVINGSTONE, Chris - COPE
209* STOCKWELL, Caitlin - OneCity
212* IRWIN, John - Vision Vancouver
213* JACKSON, Serena - OneCity
School Board
302 CHAN-PEDLEY, Lois - Green
303 THOMSON, Hilary - Vision Vancouver
315 FRASER, Janet - Green
320 REDDY, Jennifer - OneCity
329 WONG, Allan - Vision Vancouver
304 MAH, Suzie - COPE
317 SIGURDSON, Krista - OneCity
318 EPSTEIN, Kyla - OneCity
327* POPPELL, Nick - Green
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