Ladner vs. Robertson Debate: Round Two

The second mayoral debate is going on tonight at Science World.

I won't be able to attend, but will report back on what I hear around town and in the blogosphere. 

I do plan to attend the October 22nd debate, on affordable housing and homelessness at Saint Andrew’s-Wesley United Church on Burrard and Nelson.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwhitesi/

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Ladner vs. Robertson Debate: Round One

And the race is on!

Last night in front of a full & at times rowdy room in the bowels of the Vancouver Public Library, the NPA's Peter Ladner and Vision Vancouver's Gregor Robertson squared off in their first head to head debate of this civic election campaign.   

The event was hosted by Langara college and included well honed journalists: the CBC's Stephen Quinn, civics guru Frances Bula and the Courrier's Mark Hasiuk as the principle question-askers as it were.

Things of note included the energy of the room which was decidedly biased in favour of Robertson, perhaps three to one in terms of vocal support.  Also, Peter Ladner's confidence.   Despite the room's tone, he spoke with a strong voice and did not shy away from addressing issues or his opponent head on.   

Another factor, which may prove to be  the biggest challenge for Councillor Ladner, was the evident antipathy towards Mayor Sam Sullivan, his record, and the NPA. It was clear from the crowd's rumbles that despite Peter Ladner's role in challenging and then displacing Sullivan in a leadership contest, he's non-the-less closely associated with the current mayor and unpopular policies.  The palpable disdain for Sullivan was a recurring theme throughout the night, a mood that Mr. Ladner, wisely tuned into as his references to the Mayor were neutral at best.

Here's a quick listing of the debate's most memorable moments:

Biggest distraction: Apart from the dead mike/moderator screw-up false start that killed 10 minutes, Peter Ladner's decision to read his opening and closing remarks from a bright red notebook was an odd and distracting move.

Most popular position:  Ending homelessness - championed by both leaders.

Crowd favourite:  Gregor's retort on his perceived lack of experience: If experience was a good qualification for leadership then Mayor Sam Sullivan would have had an amazing term.  

Best moment of conviction:  Robertson's claim that he entered civic politics to tackle the homeless problem because "it's not getting any better".

Best display of honesty: Ladner admitting that the Civil City Project implementation isn't working very well.

Most politically dangerous statement:  Ladner claiming that temporary help for the homeless (like converting the Storeum building site into a shelter) is not, and should not be a priority, as it draws resources from long range solutions.

Best attack dog moment:  Ladner pointing out that he's never seen Roberston sit through a full session of a City council meeting, city committee meeting or translink meeting.

Best zinger: After Roberston made a stink about the 'unjust' passing of the RAV transit line and the lack of NPA leadership, Peter Ladner pointed out that it was actually the COPE/Vision dominated council that signed off on it.  After a few gasps and a hush, Roberstson, retorted that Ladner was on the Translink approval board at the time.  Vision partisans then exhaled.

Best vision statement:  Robertson's closing statement that he seeks to "rally the people of Vancouver to take responsibility for their city"  JFKesque and effective.

IN SUM:

Ladner seemed to have the edge in performance and presence while Robertson effectively communicated a message of hope and progressive change.  I'd call it a draw.

The next debate will be the  Vancouver Courier-sponsored debate at Science World on October 8th.

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Square Ideas Find an Audience

Unfortunately I was out of town and couldn't attend the "Where's the Square" speakers event last week, but other media did show up and gave it some well deserved attention.

READ THIS EXCELLENT BIT OF COVERAGE BY TIMOTHY TAYLOR IN THE GLOBE & MAIL

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Where is that Square?

The Vancouver Library is hosting an exciting civic event this evening, that focusses on Vancouver's need for a Public Square, that central urban gathering place that is so sorely missing from our city's core.

The "Where's the Square" launch, organized by the Vancouver Public Space Network, includes presentations from urbanist Lance Berlowitz, landscape architect Cornellia Oberlander, and artitect Bing Thom.

Click here for more information on the event and the related ideas competition:

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Vision Vancouver Nomination Results

For those who follow civic politics in Vancouver with nerd like zeal, you may be interested to know the results of Saturday's candidate selection meeting for Vision Vancouver.   

Over 4000 Vision members showed up in the wet to cast ballots.   The vote required two recounts due to some extremely close number counts for City Council and School Board.

The selected candidates will be on the ballot along with NPA, COPE and Green Party candidates for the upcoming Civic Election in November 15th.

The winners (with vote #s shown) are:

City Council:

Chow    George    3248
Deal    Heather    3704
Dhaliwal    Kashmir    2240
Jang    Kerry    2387
Louie    Raymond    3746
Meggs    Geoff    2851
Reimer    Andrea    2988
Stevenson    Tim    3271         
        
School Board:
Bacchus    Patti    2053
Clement    Kenneth    1962
Gregson    Sharon E.    2969
Lombardi    Mike    2177
          
Park Board:

Barnes    Constance    2242
Blyth    Sarah    2602
Hundal    Raj    1963
Jasper    Aaron    1999

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Rudolph Giuliani on Vancouver's Drug Problem

Rudolf Giuliani  has a gift, the gift of making complex issues simple. This past week he took a break from stumping around America for his buddy John McCain to make an appearance in Vancouver.  Speaking before a crowd at an economic-development conference just outside of the city, in Surrey, B.C.,  he offered his advice on how to boost the economy via crime reduction.  When he was inevitably asked about Insite, Vancouver's safe injection site, which medical researchers tout as successful in reducing deaths and disease transmission, Giuliani offered this assessment on the program:  "It's a terrible mistake". 

Apparently, for New York's former mayor, harm reduction is not an effective way to address issues of addiction and property crime, where as arresting small-time drug dealers is.

It's interesting seeing Guiliani bring his 'zero tolerance is the only answer' message to Canada's left coast, given that outgoing Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan modeled his own so-called Civil City initiative on the "broken windows theory" that underpinned Guiliani focus on the small stuff crime crackdown in the 1990s.   Curiously, despite the entrenched addiction crisis and colossal property crime rates in the city, Vancouverites have not especially warmed to the Civil City project.   This is likely due in part to Mayor Sullivan's deficit of leadership - he was recently replaced by his own party in a leadership vote - but also perhaps because the public here does not see fit to hand over its civic realm to brigades of police officers as was foisted on the streets of New York.    

It's clear in looking back at New York's crime clampdown, in the 1990s that the results were dramatic, evidenced by real reductions in crime rates during his tenure as mayor.   In recent years however, doubts have been raised by some as to the whether Giuliani is right in taking the lion's share of the credit, as he often likes to do.  A look at the statistics for violent and property crime in NYC shows that the rates had been declining for as many as four years before Giuliani took office.   

 

credit: Factcheck.org

Others have noted that incidences of police brutality and racial profiling and targeting rose dramatically over the same period.   New York's transformation has been celebrated by many and having visited there both before and during the Giuliani years I can attest for the city's makeover in terms graffiti, loitering and the number of homeless on the streets of central Manhattan.   What's less clear is what was sacrificed in the doing of this massive scrub up.  

The situation in Vancouver, while similar to New York in some respects, differs greatly both in the extent to which the Downtown eastsides problems are tightly wound around the reality of an illicit drug affliction, in particular heroin, and the degree to which New York was in the grip of violent crime in the 1980s in particular.   It's not clear that addiction was the root of crime in New York nor is Vancouver's incidence of violent crime anywhere close to the per capita levels seen in NYC.

In drawing on Rudolf Giuliani's experience Canadians might be wise to not leap to cure-all parallels between the situation in Vancouver's downtown eastside and American cities like New York.  While the desperate need for solutions to the addiction related crime and homelessness in Vancouver is rubbing it's citizens raw, a police centric solution may be neither possible or effective.   Large scale 'sanitation by force' while having obvious benefits is also a recipe for transforming a city into an oversized resort with boutique experiences in which only certain types of activities and certain kinds of people are free to move, occupy space and associate.         

Speaking of the anti-crime policies put forth to clean up New York City, Harvard law professor Bernard Harcourt describes the impact of such sanitation :

"It is, in effect, a type of 'aesthetic policing' that fosters a sterile, Disneyland, consumerist, commercial aesthetic. It reflects a desire to transform New York City into Singapore, or worse, a shopping mall. The truth is, however, that when we lose the dirt, grit, and street life of major American cities, we may also threaten their vitality, creativity, and character." Boston Review

It remains to be seen whether the lure of order at the expense of freedom and vitality will appeal to Vancouverites or whether this brand of police-state light will be rejected as holding more risks than obvious benefits.  To be sure Rudolf Giuliani's definition of freedom is worth a second look:   

"....freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

R. Giuliani, Speech on Crime, March 20, 1994

  

This post was also published at: eatyourkidsblog.blogspot.com

Photo credit:  Mike http://www.flickr.com/photos/squeakymarmot/

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