Vancouver Election’s Biggest Winner: The Condo King

Well, this mock political ad pretty much says it all. As I’ve been ranting for years now, Vision Vancouver, for all their “progressive” branding, have turned out to be exactly the same as any right-of-centre free market party in the one policy area that matters most to urban sustainability: development.

Vision may differ from the right-leaning NPA party in some benign environmental policies such as allowing backyard chickens or building separated bike lanes, but when it comes to land use policy — the one area which most directly relates to the United Nation’s overarching goal of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT — they are just as beholden to developers as the NPA, and in fact have been actively pushing unsustainable development policies such as the Historic Area Height Review (HAHR) and Short Term Incentives for Rental Housing (STIR).

Both of these Vision-endorsed development policies amount to little more than paving the airspace above the city. They are not “green”, “progressive” or “sustainable development” policies. They do not provide provide affordable housing or rental stock, or in fact achieve any of the policy aims that are used to justify them. All they do is pave the way for developers to build new condo towers.

Furthermore, in an effort to stimulate the development industry and market housing growth in Vancouver, these Vision policies specifically reduce the Community Amenity Contributions (CAC) developers normally make to the City when building condo towers. CACs help pay for daycares, community centres, heritage preservation, new green spaces, public art, social housing. All things that make cities “livable”.

I don’t know how much money was spent developing and consulting on Vision’s Greenest City Action Plan. But what I do know is that none of its 10 core recommendations is focused specifically on the issue of land-use planning.

That’s not just an oversight, it’s an environmental travesty.

Why I’m Voting for “Good Guy Gregor”

I have to admit, amidst all the violent crackdowns in #occupied cities, Mayor Gregor Robertson – despite taking a lot of flack from conservative pundits (and the opposition NPA’s mayoral candidate, Suzanne Anton) for not quashing Vancouver’s tent city – is starting to look like one of the more civilized mayors in North America.

While New York City’s Mayor Bloomburg called in bulldozers, pepper spray, water cannons and riot police in the dead of night to address “fire and safety concerns”, our own city officials went in and had a chat, negotiated the removal of a few obvious problem structures, and got the VAG grounds cleaned up nicely. No trampling of Charter Rights, no barring the Free Press, no mayhem or arrests.

So yeah, I back the Juiceman.

The Mainstream Blah-gosphere Circa 2012

Campbell’s Legacy: Dishonest, Abusive, Disrespectful

Well, it had to happen eventually. The truth had to leak out about Gordon Campbell. And finally one shoe has dropped. Apparently sick of dissident Liberal Cabinet member from Kootenay East, Bill Bennett, telling everyone that the Premier had to leave NOW, not sometime next year, the lame-duck Premier decided to boot him out of cabinet.

But, good old boy that he is, Bill Bennett wasn’t going to go away quietly. He called a press conference a few hours after getting ousted and, within minutes, started ripping Gordon Campbell personally and telling anecdotes of the abusive, dishonest, bullying ways of the Premier. It is a fascinating, horrifying and disturbing tale Bennett tells. Campbell is portrayed as a man who clearly shares the traits of a classic psychopath. Not too surprising when you look at the way Campbell has lied and cheated and bullied his way through 3 election victories.

Gordon Campbell is, quite simply, a total disgrace. Bad policies are one thing, but the portrait Bennett paints is of a man who is really sick, and likely needs some serious help. Especially frightening is the reference to the “battered wife syndrome” that pervades the Liberal caucus, and the women MLAs that Campbell reduced to tears on many occasions, and especially the three women who quit because of his disrespectful and abusive nature.

Meanwhile, The Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer, who is considered by some (on the right) to be the best political columnist in BC, still has his nose way up Campbell’s backside, and only two days ago wrote a column called “History Will Show Campbell in a More Favourable Light”. Earth to Palmer. Wake up already! You might want to rethink your fawning. Bennett’s tirade is only the tip of the iceberg. Just think of all the sordid secrets surrounding the sale of BC Rail that could still come out….

There’s a link below to Bennett’s lengthy press conference (which is going viral), but I’ve pulled some of his choice quotes and copied them out below.

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“I’m tired of the bullshit that goes on in politics and I’m really tired of the way Gordon Campbell thinks he can just run on people. He can run on me. I’m a tough guy, I can take it. But I’ve seen him do it to other people in our caucus. You have almost a battered wife syndrome inside our caucus today, inside our cabinet. It’s really sad, and all the man has to do to give the B.C. Liberal party a chance to renew itself is to leave. That’s all he has to do.”

“He’s got a history of intimidating people over the years… many, many, many, people have been intimidated by him…. I’ve seen him angry on many, many, many occasions…”

Reporter: “Have you seen people in tears after one of his tirades?” Bennett: “Absolutely. Absolutely.”

“I think you’re all aware that he is a very intimidating human being. He does have a temper. He does talk to people disrespectfully in caucus. I’ve seen him do it dozens and dozens of times. He’s done it to me.”

“The first time he got angry at me… he got so angry at me, that he got in my face, he got so angry at me, he actually spit in my face. He’s not a nice man. He’s not a nice man.”

“He took me behind the barn, and he was outraged… he started to shout at me… he caught me by such surprise, I was just amazed. Here he is, the Premier of the province, and he’s spitting on me!”

“Look… when they decided to kick me out they would sit down and talk about how they were going to spin this… So they had a little plan all set for me, I mean they took my phone away, they shut it down so I couldn’t call anyone, they shut down my credit card… they knew exactly what they were doing. They couldn’t trust me not to tell the truth.”

“Everything he does is staged. I’m surprised they didn’t have someone from PAB there organizing the event.”

“I not only got shot down, I mean, he was abusive in his response…. He did his usual bully thing, and that was the end of that.”

“There’s Christy Clark, there’s Carole Taylor, there’s Olga Ilich: three outstanding, intelligent women who should be here right now, they should be here serving British Columbians. Ask yourselves why they’re not here? They’re not here because of Premier Campbell, that’s why they’re not here.”

“I had had enough of the way that Premier Campbell runs his shop. It is disrespectful to the people inside, it is disrespectful to the people of the province. It is time that he goes… he’s lost the public entirely. Now, I just don’t think that the public has any respect left for the Premier of BC and he should just leave.”

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20101117/bennett-liberal-cabinet-101117/

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Liberal Prudence

Wherein the Liberal definition of prudence is:

1 + 1 = 100% over budget

…because being more than 100% wrong is redundant.

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“Better get a bucket, I’m going to throw up!” Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote gorges himself  until he finally explodes after eating a “wafer thin” mint. The BC Liberal’s implosion is no less disgusting.

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I was reading BC Legislative reporter Keith Baldry’s article about the unfathomable miscalculations the Liberals have made on budgets during their time in office, and the serious lack of credibility it points to for both Colin Hansen and Gordon Campbell. So I did a cursory study of a five different BC Liberal budgets, which quickly revealed an almost pathological level of financial incompetence that has cost taxpayers over 5 billion dollars (and I have not included the Olympics, Gateway, Abby Hospital, or privatization schemes like BC Rail, BC Hydro, BC Gas, or shifting tax ploys like the carbon tax, MSP premiums, corporate tax cuts, oil and gas drilling rate cuts — the list of Liberal boondoggles costing BC taxpayers goes on and on).

Mmmmmn, smells like pork!

Despite the BC Liberals freakishly cunning ability to maintain a reputation as tough and prudent financial managers who know how to do business (thanks MSM, including reporters like Baldry, for never questioning the lie all these years), as the numbers below clearly show, Colin Hansen and Gordon Campbell are by far the most bungling, inept and costly government British Columbian taxpayers have ever seen. Gee, no wonder they had to raid BC Gaming and take the hatchet to the Arts sector.

The numbers don’t lie, unlike the BC Liberals.

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B.C. Liberal Budgets Studied: 5 (see below for a breakdown of each)

Total Original Amount of the Budgets: 4.20 billion

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 9.41 billion

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 5.21 billion

Average Percent Over Budget: 124%

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1. BC Place Retractable Roof

Original Budget Announcement: 365 million

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 577 million

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 212 million

Percent Over Budget: 58%

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2. Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre

Original Budget Announcement: 495 million

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 883 million

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 388 million

Percent Over Budget: 78%

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3. RAV/Canada Line

Original Budget Announcement: 1.35 billion

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 2.80 billion

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 1.45 billion

Percent Over budget: 107%

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4. BC Liberals’ Pre-Election Budget, Feb. 2009

Original Budget Announcement: 495 million

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 1.78 billion (last I heard–it keeps changing)

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 1.29 billion

Percent Over budget: 260%

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5. Port Mann Bridge Twinning

Original Budget Announcement: 1.5 billion

Actual Cost to Taxpayers: 3.3 billion

Total Over Budget Cost to Taxpayers: 1.8 billion

Percent Over budget: 120%

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Art as Propaganda: The BC Spirit Festival

Today, I’m mourning an anniversary of sorts, as it was one year ago today that the BC Liberals sent the mass emails around the province announcing the massive raiding of BC Lottery Corporation and cutting off funding to thousands of arts and cultural groups. Having started this blog only two weeks before, I hadn’t expected to be suddenly thrown into a spiral of poverty and bitterness, which admittedly has only grown worse as the months passed. Like so many others, I was forced to Stop All Art.

So it perhaps comes as no surprise that the Campbell government and Tourism, Culture and the Arts Minister Kevin Krueger – one of the more worthless and imbecilic politicians in this province, and that’s saying something – recently announced that they would be “restoring” about 10 million worth of “arts” funding on a sham annual propaganda event called the BC Spirit Festival.

This funding program is an attempt by Campbell to milk the success of the Olympics for the next three years every February, which, not coincidently, will take us to the next election in 2013.

Needless to say, the arts community is once again enraged, as most organizations are barely clinging to life as it is, as they just recently learned that funding will be cut again this year. And now the only hope to access any provincial funding is to sell out their artistic freedom and put on some sort of pseudo-Olympic celebration that pays homage to the assholes who crippled them. It really is sick.

So sick, in fact, that BC Arts Council chair Jane Danzo finally decided to resign 10 days ago, slamming the government for their latest cuts while simultaneously announcing the Spirit Festival fund with absolutely no consultation with the Arts Council.

The last two weeks have seen numerous arts community heavyweights weigh in on the matter and condemn the government for what some have labelled a fascist view of the arts as state propaganda. In a blog post that was subsequently published in the Georgia Straight, John McLaughlin had these choice words:

“But outside of economic and political arguments, the real slap in the face comes from the arrogance of the Spirit Festival scheme. The government has slashed the arts community in half — then spoon-fed back a shadow of its previous funding in such a way that creative control is ripped from the hands of artists themselves. They are now expected to act as mouthpieces championing a legacy of debt, excess, and political misdirection — and we’re expected not to notice.”

“That’s not “belt-tightening” — that’s premeditated murder by strangulation.”

And they wonder why 705,000 signed the No HST petition? It has very little to do with the actual tax, you fools. People simply hate this government, and everything Gordon Campbell stands for.

And with so many underemployed but highly creative people kicking around the province these days, Recall in the Fall is going to be a nasty, dirty fight. But hey, they brought it on themselves.

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Ratspeak

Frugality: The quality of being frugal; prudent economy; that careful management of anything valuable which expends nothing unnecessarily…

I was walking downtown with my son yesterday in the sweltering heat and we saw a 7-11 and decided a slurpy would hit the spot.

Well, a small slurpy last summer — and for many years before that — cost 99 cents + GST of 5 cents = $1.04.

But just before the Olympics, 7-11 bumped the price a nickel, to $1.04 + GST of 5 cents = $1.09.

Then, less than a month ago, just like Colin Hansen predicted (because he’s soooo good with predictions), 7-11 passed on the savings of the new HST to consumers by bumping up the price of a small slurpy yet another nickel, to $1.09.

With the HST, the tax is now 13 cents, and the total for a small slurpy is $1.22.

That’s almost an 18% increase in the cost of this simple, mass-produced item in eight months! To extrapolate that level of inflation across even a small sector of the economy could have disastrous ripple effects….

To wit, my son is now asking me for a raise in his allowance.

And, to avoid taking yet another hit to my own disposal income, I have decided to freeze my son’s allowance for the next decade.

To be sure, neither of us will be setting foot in 7-11, or any other overpriced chain convenience store, for a very long time, especially given the fact that they are part of the Western Convenience Stores Association, one of the six business groups who have launched the legal challenge to the NO HST petition.

Now, it would seem to me that, in a consumer-driven economy based on convenience and mass production, it can’t be a very good thing for the captains of industry to have parents all across North America teaching their kids about FRUGALITY for the first time in 50 years…

Just saying.

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Bread and Circuses (Another Liberal Budget)

It’s that time before a paycheck when the bread heels in the back of the fridge are savoured, toasted with a sliver of butter and served with a glass of cold water, to be eaten in small bites.

It’s that time between circuses when the routine becomes drudgery, the job seems pointless, and the reward too little. Coworkers are all schmoozing and mooching, cruising some angle that only makes money, willfully distracted by a moment in time that answers, “Yes.”

This other little city in North Cascadia crafts perfect endings, sundowners that make jaws drop, cycles of ecstasy that lead to nightmares entwined in sleep. The fear rides momentum to the brink of another fantastic hope, but the sweet smell of waking up is so comforting it keeps lulling back unconsciousness, where the nightmare is relived.

The expectation is that the memory of the circus will make the old bread heels taste better. But the circus is soon forgotten, easily separated from the memory of just who raided the cupboard again. The circus succeeds despite the soul-sucking shills eating cake all around, not because of them. It is sure sign of an empire in deep decline.

For it is hunger, only hunger, that makes stale bread palatable.

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Literary Clearcut: The Liberal’s Grim Reaper Strikes Again

PRESS RELEASE
Literary clearcut prompts quick response

B.C.’s beleaguered literary organizations are forming the Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in British Columbia one day after the Arts & Culture branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & the Arts (Hon. Kevin Krueger) simultaneously removed all funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia ($45,000), BC BookWorld newspaper ($31,000) and B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers ($20,000) via phone calls from its executive director Andrea Henning, on October 6.

“Thus far they have chopped off three heads,” says Alan Twigg, publisher of BC BookWorld for twenty-one years, “but indications are that more heads will roll.”

The 50-member Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, founded in 1974, is the largest regional affiliate of the Association of Canadian Publishers. As the hub of a remarkably diverse publishing industry of mostly small firms, it undertakes extensive business, marketing, promotion and awareness programs such as Resource Tools for Educators, B.C. Books for Schools, a catalogue for Canadian Aboriginal Books for Schools and B.C. Books on BC Ferries.

“Our B.C. publishers are reeling,” says ABBPBC executive director Margaret Reynolds. “It is an absolutely bizarre decision. Governments across the country, federal and provincial, recognize the importance of culture to the lives of their citizens. Why invest in this infrastructure then unceremoniously withdraw it?”

BC BookWorld, since 1987, is distributed via more than 900 outlets around the province on a quarterly basis, reaching approximately 100,000 readers per issue. It has been identified by the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing—in a report commissioned by the BC government—as “the most important cog in the infrastructure” that supports writing and publishing in B.C.

“BC BookWorld generates 70% of its own revenues,” says Twigg, “So Arts & Culture has chosen to sabotage something literary that is genuinely popular, public-serving, non-elitist and educational. It boggles the mind. We’re the focal point for all B.C. books and authors.” Twigg got a brief phone call less than a month before his non-profit society was scheduled to renew its 21-year partnership with the provincial government.

Since 1993, the BC Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP) has represented the B.C. magazine industry by supporting the talent, knowledge and skills of its publishers. One million people around the world read the 82 member magazines, which include arts and culture, news, business, lifestyle, leisure and special interest magazines.

“We know there is a recession, and perhaps cuts can be expected,” says Rhona MacInnes, BCAMP executive director, “but 100 percent is shocking. By the province’s own reckoning, the arts sector offers a healthy return on investment, so there needs to be a fundamental shift in theway this government assesses value. Sadly, these Draconian measures are just the beginning. We’ve all been given notice to expect severe cuts to the BC Arts Council.”
Some sectors of the literary economy have already been hurt. “Essentially the B.C. government saw they had a deficit,” says Bryan Pike, executive director of the BC Book Prizes, “and we didn’t have any. So they decided to give us some of theirs! They are off-loading debt onto charitable organizations.”
Although British Columbia has one of the highest book reading rates per capita in Canada, or North America, per-capita support for the literary arts from Victoria has always fallen far short of standards set by Ontario and Quebec. “More cuts to the literary community will be devastating,” says Carla Reimer, Executive Director of the Federation of B.C. Writers, one of the largest writing organizations in Canada with over 700 members.

The literary community is aghast at total withdrawal of funding from three of its integral organizations. “The recent cuts to these organizations are a blow to the entire literary community,” says Hal Wake, director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival. “Our festival is about to welcome almost 100 writers from around the world and it is extremely unfortunate that they will arrive at a time of crisis for so many cultural organizations.”

Some of the province’s foremost writers, such as Douglas Coupland (Generation X) and William Gibson (Neuromancer) have already raised their voices to protest the provincial government’s proposals for decreasing support for the arts. “As a futurist, someone with some experience in long-range scenario-based corporate and municipal planning,” says William Gibson, “I’ve seen my share of jaw-droppingly shortsighted proposals. But these proposed cuts to support for the arts in BC (almost 90% by 2011) really take the cake. This is governance guaranteed to rot the fabric of our province’s future.”

Brad Cran, Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver concurs. “Artists and cultural institutions work on already tight budgets, stretching each dollar as far as possible,” he says, “often with a volunteer workforce and underpaid staffers. Now we’re not talking about minor cuts: we’re talking about devastating cuts. The fact that this is happening on the eve of the Olympics (with culture as one of the pillars of the Olympic bid) is an added insult and a broken promise to British Columbians.”

It took decades for the province to generate stability for the ABPBC, BC BookWorld and BCAMP. The Coalition for the Defence of Writing and Publishing in British Columbia will be calling for the reinstatement of funding to these three vital organizations—and an end to the anticipated bloodletting that lies ahead.

Media contact information:

Margaret Reynolds 604-684-0228 / margaret@books.bc.ca
Alan Twigg 604-736-4022 / bookworld@telus.net
Rhona MacInnes 604-688-1175 / info@bcmags.com

Coalition for the Defence of Writing & Publishing in British Columbia
Suite 600-402 West Pender St., Vancouver, B.C. V6B 1T6 • 604-684-0228