By election day on Nov. 19, several million dollars will have flowed through the campaign coffers of Vancouver’s mayoral and council candidates. But the public won’t know an exact total, or who footed the bill, until well into 2012. Vancouver voters often take it for granted that big campaign cheque-writers pull the strings in council [...]
Ryan Clayton and Kaitlin Burnett traveled to Victoria, B.C., late last month to meet with Minister of Education George Abbott. During their meeting, they handed him 250 letters written on purple paper, each one asking that a sexual orientation and gender identity policy aimed at stopping homophobia, transphobia and heterosexism in schools be implemented province-wide. [...]
Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association (NPA) candidates for school board are proposing a new way to pay for future city schools: public/private partnerships. “We have been promoting [the ‘no-cost’ model] and it’s no different from what we’ve done in the past. It’s just that we need to get it out there,” said the NPA’s Ken Denike. The [...]
Some residents in Dunbar, a neighbourhood made up predominantly of single-detached homes, are hoping that the incoming Vancouver City Council will put a moratorium on the building of laneway houses. The council approved a bylaw in July 2009 rezoning 94 per cent of the city, in the process allowing homeowners to build small homes located [...]
Vancouver’s at-large voting system creates a tougher race for minorities and leaves parts of the city without adequate political representation, says municipal councillor Raj Hundal. Hundal was the only South Asian candidate elected in the 2008 municipal election and is not running this year. He said that under the current system, in theory, every councillor, Vancouver [...]
The timing of the provincial government’s decision not to fund four emergency shelters in Vancouver this winter, just a month before the municipal elections, put effectively yet another housing issue on the ballot. BC Housing, citing the most recent homeless count and a focus on supporting more permanent housing solutions, announced on Oct. 11 that [...]
Sara Moghadamjoo is a young well-educated Iranian-Canadian, who recently graduated with two masters degree from Simon Fraser University and is only a year away from getting her PhD from the University of British Columbia. She decided to stand in the upcoming municipal elections for the district of West Vancouver as she wanted to represent the [...]
With a municipal election looming, opponents to the Vancouver Park Board’s elected officials are alleging that the organization has lost its independence from City Hall. At the heart of the matter are $5.2 million in city-approved cuts to the parks and recreation operating budget since 2009, for which political adversaries blame a “lack of advocacy” [...]
RJ Aquino is Vancouver’s first Filipino candidate for city council. He’s one of the 41 people vying for a seat. “I made a decision to run but I wasn’t thinking I should run because I am Filipino,” said Aquino. This is Aquino’s first foray into politics. He is running under the COPE banner as a [...]
The ”UniverCity” lands are part of an undemocratic system that needs reform, according to candidates for the area’s elected representative. Four new contenders are challenging the incumbent director Maria Harris on the issue of governance of Electoral Area A – a scattered set of regions around Vancouver that are not part of any municipality. They [...]
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