ORR Report: WeChat Lies, Procedural Trickery, and Teaming up with the Bloc Quebecois to Tackle Bright Headlights
Where do I even begin? I assume everyone’s read the news. The news where Lenny Zhou accused non-ABC councillors of dealing drugs in order to mobilize supporters against lifting the pause in supportive housing on WeChat and then apologizing for having bad information which the mayor accepted and then it came out that it was actually the mayor who said it about me when responding to a question about polling and then when asked about he said called me to apologize… 16 times? That news?
I could go on and on, but what’s important to know is that I’m not going to allow the mayor to intimidate me, fearmonger to the Chinese community and drive wedges between us, and further stigmatize drug users. I’m suing the mayor. And by the looks of it, you feel the same. A whopping $43k raised on my GoFundMe in just a few days. I don’t know what to say. I’m completely overwhelmed with gratitude.
That being said, It’s been pretty hard to focus on my job these past few weeks and I just realized that the last Orr Report was back in early February when we were looking forward to a food recovery motion with Pete Fry and my VoteBus/ranked ballot for mayor motion. The former was referred to MetroVan by Sarah Kirby-Yung and the latter was defeated by ABC. But hey, at least we got one night of fireworks for $2 million right?
At the following Standing Committee meeting I had a motion with councillor Bligh to create a FIFA working group to address gendered violence, sex work, street sweeps, and way finding for visitors to navigate our toxic drug supply. Staff said they were already doing the work and that we don’t have the staff resources- a bit of a contradiction in terms and a theme we are certainly seeing develop since Zero Means Zero. It was defeated.
The other was one that made front page news: ICE out of FIFA. While the mayor had said just days before that ICE wasn’t welcome at FIFA, they oddly ruled the motion out of order on a very flimsy justification from the chair. The phrase “any additional deployment” of ICE was seen as false information, despite the motion stating that ICE is currently deployed at the American Consulate. Councillor Fry challenged the ruling but needed 2/3s of council approval. Interestingly enough, Dominato, Kirby-Yung, and Meiszner all supported the challenge. Procedural trickery prevailed.
This is all too funny because during the next motion, Montague’s $4 million police academy in the Woodwards building, I tried to rule it out of order for containing incorrect information based on this article which literally cites the Justice Institute saying the motion was based on incorrect information. Guess what? It was ruled in order. You can’t make this up. Now, the original vision of that space: a community serving retail space with a post office and pharmacy is now a police training centre unironically situated next to a Stan Douglas photo of police beating up hippies in Gastown. While the opposition asked questions about the details, like “will we need a rezoning”, “will we pay property tax”, and “is this a bailout for WestBank”, it was approved. And now the province has given it the go ahead. Ugh.
This was also the day that Councillor Bligh had to pull her “stop the ban on supportive housing” motion because Lenny Zhou had mobilized the Chinese community on WeChat by calling supportive housing “drug dens”. While Bligh is bringing back the motion on April 1st, we don’t know if Lenny has corrected that misinformation. It would be good to mobilize on this one.
Finally, my motion to commit to Recommit to $10-a-day Childcare in Vancouver was once again watered down. They took out the stuff where I stated “new developments proposing privately operated childcare spaces are required to secure the use of those spaces as childcare in perpetuity or for the life of the building” and replaced it with just advocating to the province. It was very frustrating but after a long day I just went with it. I needed some sort of a win after so many Ls!
Speaking of wins, fast forward to the March 10th council meeting. When I heard that Car Free Days were being cancelled I immediately hit up the promoter to find out how much it would take to save it. Only $30k. Later that night councillor Maloney phoned me and I suggested we do an urgent motion, similar to Sim’s firework motion. Again, Maloney went into action and drafted up a motion, did a press release, and filmed an “authentically awkward” video with me right after the most intense press conference of my life.
That same council meeting however saw staff pull the plug on some old motions. Most of it was just rolling into other work that’s already being done, but lots of it seemed as though it was due to budget constraints. The opposition councillors severed out 3 that had dire life-safety consequences: Advocating for the Requirement of Side Guards on Heavy Trucks in Urban Areas, Protecting People on Cornwall Avenue, and Installing Means Prevention Fencing on the Granville Street Bridge. We felt putting a dollar value on peoples’ lives was callous. ABC disagreed and voted it down. I guess we can take solace in the fact that they also dropped Sim’s ridiculous Bitcoin motion.
The next day at the Standing Committee meeting I had another two motions. Up first however was a motion to spend another $300k from the reserve (that’s up to $6.3 million now) for a FIFA pedestrian fest on Granville. Councillors questioned why this was announced at a press conference before it had even come to council. I actually just walked out at this point. The vote was unanimous in favour.
My motion Advancing the Right to Food and Public Food Infrastructure had about 14 speakers. Councillor Dominato asked me if this motion was exploring ways to have a publicly funded grocery store and I said yes. I could tell right then it would be voted down. I think they mentioned something about jurisdiction and staff resources. Sigh. How can you sit there and say, “No actually, access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is not a human right and a core social determinant of health”. I can’t wait to flip council in October.
Finally, Councillor Maloney and I had a motion about expanding bikeshare and looking at integrating it into the transit system. This was something brought up at COPE’s transit conference, and was re-iterated in a video by Uytae Lee. I shared it with Lucy and she, um, rode with it. It was a good motion and guess what happened? That’s right, it was watered down by ABC to be just an advocacy motion.
Keep in mind all this is happening while we have a record number of public hearings, some of which went into the wee hours of the morning. Controversial rezonings like the False Creek School, the hotel at 2030 Barclay, a Westbank project on Hastings and Glen, and of course, the Vancouver Official Development plan. I’m not going to get into every one. Just keep in mind that I have a quasi-judicial role in these hearings and have to consider each application with an open mind. In my mind, they have to really deviate from policy to be voted down. With Barclay and the Westbank project, I felt that they did. Both were referred back to staff.
For the ODP, I asked a ton of questions. I really wanted to get this right. I had read a few articles about how this was going to be a disaster for Vancouver. All of the answers to my questions poked holes in this narrative. This is not a mass rezoning, it’s a high level planning document that folds in a number of neighbourhood plans. This isn’t new; 80% of it was from the Vancouver Plan which saw years of consultation. We have a legal requirement to do this: the BC govt passed legislation mandating that Vancouver align with other municipalities by adopting an Offical Development Plan. We are a creature of the province and we hold no cards. We can’t refer it back to staff. We can, however, amend it in the future.
I asked if this would help us solve homelessness, to which I was received with some nervous laughter. They said this would make it easier to build social and supportive housing across the city and close to amenities. They told me the vision was for an equitable housing system that prioritizes housing for those who need it most. They told me there would be an extra layer of protection for the dissolution of school lands. They told me it would protect green spaces and that it wasn’t intended to plan for infrastructure- that happens in the capital planning process. I voted to support the ODP and was proud of the work that staff did to get this done before the June deadline.
All the while this is happening there are issues bubbling under the surface about how this city is run. Turns out Vancouver missed out on millions as land deals were struck without proper strategy. There’s also allegations that Internal Emails Show Deputy City Manager Directed VAC Design, Scripted Council Messaging. This is certainly concerning and a quagmire of jurisdictional overlap I’ve been wary of um, wading into. But what it boils down to is, Vancouver voted for a 50m pool in a plebiscite and that’s what should happen. Then there’s the fact that Vancouver skateboarders to lose crucial skate park this summer. As I said in the article I’m disappointed in terms of the fact that the city couldn’t find any kind of workaround. The latest issue is we’re going to remove lifeguards from some beaches this summer as part of cost-cutting. Again, this is the consequence of running the city like a business. Austerity kills.
In better news, the petition to modernize the federal regulations governing motor vehicle headlights by Bloc Quebecois MP Xavier Barsalou-Duval is up to 6760 signatures. Transport Canada has also released a survey on vehicle headlights and glare at night. Lastly, the FCM board approved my motion, so I’ll be presenting it on the floor at the annual convention in Edmonton in front of thousands of municipal politicians!
If you’re still with me there are some upcoming motions! Councillor Bligh is bringing back a full repeal of the cruel and wrongheaded pause on supportive housing, so stay tuned to sign up for that one. I’m also working on a very cool approach to taxing the rich using MEVA. I also have a somewhat cheeky but equally earnest motion asking Vancouver to join the Elect Respect campaign.
Phew well that’s the update! Thanks for reading. We got this.
Bonus: “People look to Vancouver as a progressive place”: An interview with COPE Councillor Sean Orr