THE ORR REPORT: On passing my first motions unanimously, honouring Trey Helten, opposing a million-dollar sign, and taking the fight for housing on to Ottawa

Last week, my first two motions at City Council passed unanimously. That’s a sentence I would never have imagined writing just a few weeks ago.

First we passed my motion, "Increasing Funding to Vital Community Libraries." The idea for this motion came to me the day after the election. A supporter reached out to me on Sunday, the day after a very late election night, to let me know that their local library hours were being rolled back starting that Monday morning. So I got right to work on that issue on Monday morning; the response was inspiring, so it seemed natural to draft one of my first motions with the aim of figuring out how to reverse these cuts to hours. 

Folks in Vancouver wrote over 600 letters to city council, and we had a ton of inspiring speakers at Council who made the case for supporting our libraries and library workers. This motion puts us on course to increase funding to the VPL in the 2026 budget to increase library service hours. 

Before the motion was passed, an ABC councillor introduced an amendment that muddied the waters a bit about why library hours had been recently reduced. I know there’s concern that this amendment might be read to attribute the reduced hours to the library workers union’s collective agreement. So let me put one thing straight: library workers are underpaid and like so many workers have been made to bear the burden of underfunded public services.

My motion getting passed means City staff will be investigating the best way to restore library hours and to get all neighbourhood branches open seven days a week. In the meantime, we’re going to keep up our campaign to support public libraries being more accessible and staffed by well-paid workers whose collective agreement is fully respected.

We also passed the motion "Honouring Trey Helten: Renaming “Ashtrey Alley”, which will rename an Alley near Victory Square after Trey Helten, the local harm reduction advocate who tragically passed away last month. This is a request that comes from community members who worked closely with him, and I am proud to have brought it to council as a small tribute to his contributions to Vancouver. Trey was a pillar of the community and someone who always went above and beyond to help people.

Pete Fry from the Greens also introduced what I thought was a great motion called "Places to Be and Places to Go," which supports the development of more daytime community drop-ins and public washrooms. This is a desperately needed initiative — more public washrooms have been an ongoing need in Vancouver for decades.

Far less important, but still noteworthy: I cast the only vote against a $1 million selfie sign that’s being planned for the waterfront by the convention centres downtown. Given how everybody is feeling squeezed, and so many public services are underfunded, I think it sends the wrong message to commit $50k/year to maintaining an expensive sign for tourists. Putting a sign up that just says “Vancouver” in front of an ocean and mountain view also feels redundant, and maybe a little tacky.

On the anniversary of the Nakba, as a small gesture of solidarity with Palestinian Vancouverites who are seeing the horrific images out of Gaza daily (and unfortunately the overwhelming silence of the political class on their human rights and dignity,) I wore a Keffiyeh in the Council chambers. A week later, the former PMO of Israel Ehud Elmert wrote in an op-ed: “What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians.” Standing up to condemn genocide is the right thing to do, and the city’s own Racial and Ethno-Cultural Equity Advisory Committee passed a ceasefire resolution in January of 2024.

On that note, last week staff presented a requested report on the city’s Advisory Committees suggesting the possibility that as many as 10 of them could be shut down. These advisory committees provide a voice to communities that this exact report says are often under-represented by other forms of engagement — Seniors, Disabled folks, LGBT+ folks, Renters, and more. The report says that the Urban Indigenous Advisory Committee should not be shut down because it will harm trust with the urban Indigenous population — but why would that not apply to Seniors and people with disabilities too?

I also stood with members of the Jewish community to denounce antisemitism for Jewish heritage month and I commemorated the anniversary of the Guru Nanak Jahaz incident, formerly known as the Komagata Maru (a colonial name). I’m committed to fighting racism, xenophobia, and exclusion wherever it arises. 

I remain critical of the VPD’s “Project Barrage” and the way policing of the Downtown Eastside has been politicized against the poor. The VPD, which just announced a new chief, held another press conference touting Barrage, but there was very little meaningful data. One thing the limited data did show is that domestic break-and-enters are up 43% in Strathcona, validating the concern that overpolicing our poorest neighbourhood may be pushing people around and having spillover effects in adjacent areas of the City. Unfortunately, the snapshot they provided doesn’t include areas likely to get spillover. The total amount of incidents is also not reported, only the percentage change. The VPD crime dashboard uses different crime categories than the Barrage reporting, so we can’t confirm how many fewer incidents there are, or how they fit into broader trends.

I remain committed to finding out just who authorized that $5 million for Barrage at the start of campaign season, since it wasn’t approved by Council and the police board says it wasn’t them either. We need to stop throwing good money after bad by criminalizing poverty and address the root causes. 

Coming up, I have another motion about the human right to housing with Pete Fry – based on the campaign by the B.C. Poverty Reduction Coalition. Teale Bondaroff has passed a similar motion in Saanich. In just my first month on the job, I’ve already started to connect with other municipal elected representatives who are fighting for the same things in their communities. The reality is that municipalities have limited powers, and so I see it as an essential part of my job to bring the fight for what we need to higher levels of government.

Speaking of which, this week I’m heading to Ottawa for the annual conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s federal government kicked off a new session of Parliament with a Speech from the Throne. Carney campaigned on building housing faster than at any time since World War II. The question is what type of housing and for who? Incoming Federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, when he was Mayor of Vancouver, lamented the lack of reliable federal funding for affordable housing. Now he controls federal housing funding. Can we count on him to deliver what we need?

While I’m in Ottawa I’ll be connecting with leaders from cities and towns across the country to press the feds for money for a generational investment in co-op, public, and social housing. In fact, COPE has launched a campaign to press PM Carney to make sure his government delivers on the kind of housing we actually need in Vancouver and across Canada. You can add your voice to this effort here.

Before heading to Ottawa to take the fight for housing to the feds, I’ve had several more local meetings here in Vancouver. Sometimes it feels non-stop, but I’m honoured to be doing this work. I love to learn and I love to fight for the things we all need and deserve. 

I take this job very seriously and appreciate all your support and feedback. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your engagement in local democracy.