When Ottawa city councillor and author Clive Doucet left Vancouver International Airport for the downtown core, he was on the back of a tandem bicycle belonging to West End Residents Association president Brent Granby. The Straight followed closely behind.

“It was rumoured that Premier [Gordon] Campbell was on my flight,” Doucet told the Straight on January 12 as he approached the UBC Westbrook Mall turnoff on Southwest Marine Drive. “Somebody in steerage had said Campbell was travelling first class.”

At a WERA-sponsored event at the Coal Harbour Community Centre the next day, Doucet focused on the local political scene. He told the audience he was sure that Ottawa and Vancouver could learn from each other, because neither was perfect.

“We need to have a little bit of Ottawa in Vancouver and a little bit of Vancouver in Ottawa,” Doucet said. “Ottawa lacks the big-city vision Vancouver has, and Vancouver lacks the small-community outlook.”

In Ottawa, where there are no party slates at the civic level, things are pretty good for the Capital Ward councillor, who has served three terms. However, Vancouver will this year elect a mayor, councillors, school board trustees, and park board commissioners on an at-large basis. Unlike Ottawa, Vancouver does not have wards, where politicians represent a geographic area.

Vancouver’s three mainstream civic parties—the ruling Non-Partisan Association, Vision Vancouver, and the Coalition of Progressive Electors—are all jostling for position for 10 council spots. After Vision’s annual general meeting on January 14, Vision and COPE members were still none the wiser as to what arrangement, if any, they would reach on mounting a joint challenge to the NPA ahead of the November 15 election.

Given Doucet’s doomsday scenario in his book Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual, party slates might be causing too much distraction in the face of the major issues Doucet’s book title highlights.

“I don’t like them [slatles], but I don’t have a considered opinion on the local level,” Doucet said after the rowdy Vision meeting, where Vision, COPE, and NPA councillor Suzanne Anton all rubbed shoulders. “I do really believe that you need a proportional representation [electoral system] at the city level. And I believe that you need to have ward councillors, and you need to have citywide councillors.

“For example, at the provincial level, we should be electing some provincewide MLAs, as well as MLAs from other ridings. Unless you have that, the premier has an unfair share of power. The mayor [of Ottawa] has that [power], as he is the only one who is elected citywide. So individual councillors are very reluctant to go up against him.”

The Straight pointed out that former Vancouver mayor Art Phillips had advocated a similar mix to the Thomas Berger commission on electoral reform, which put forward recommendations for the city’s 2004 referendum on wards. However, that option was ruled out by Berger—a former B.C. Supreme Court justice—and the choice was either all wards or the status quo. (The latter prevailed in October 2004.)

“Well, I think he [Berger] made a mistake,” Doucet said. “The Greeks said it a long time ago: balance. Life is all about balance. The balance is never perfect, but some balances are better than others. I think three-quarters at the local level gives you lots of local neighbourhood representation, and one-quarter citywide gives us city vision.”

Andrea Reimer, a former Vancouver Green school trustee, told the Straight that the at-large system prevents any real debate about eliminating parties at the civic level.

“Once you have one party, you must have two or three or four, because it is impossible to beat a united bloc in a slate vote,” she said. “The way the at-large voting system works, once you have one party, you all have to be in parties.”