Vision Vancouver delays dealing with UBCM motion

The motion seemed straightforward enough. It proposed that Vancouver city council request that Mayor Sam Sullivan write to the Union of B.C. Municipalities and ask the organization to allow the leader of the Green Party of B.C.—the third major party in provincial politics after the Liberals and the NDP—to address its annual convention in September.

Non-Partisan Association councillor Kim Capri, who sits on the UBCM executive, introduced the motion on July 29 at the last council meeting before council went on summer break. But Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson, a former NDP MLA, called notice—a procedural move that bumped discussion of the motion to the next regular council meeting, on September 16.

“I thought that was really odd,” Capri told the Georgia Straight. “It makes me wonder whether he [Stevenson] does have an objection to the legitimacy of the Green party, and not wanting to support their ability to have some time to speak at the convention.”

At last year’s UBCM convention, Sullivan introduced a motion asking delegates to give then–Green party interim leader Christopher Ian Bennett five minutes to address the meeting. In his motion, which failed to garner the required 60 percent support, the mayor noted that there was a precedent for allowing the leader of a political party that didn’t have four seats in the legislature to speak at a UBCM convention. This was in reference to former New Democrat Party interim leader Joy MacPhail, one of only two NDP MLAs to survive the decimation of the party in the 2001 election.

“I think you could argue that the NDP people in the audience preferred the Green party not to have a voice,” NPA councillor and mayoral nominee Peter Ladner recalled to the Straight in a phone interview of what became of Sullivan’s motion.

Ladner faces former Vancouver-Fairview NDP MLA Gregor Robertson, Vision Vancouver’s nominee, in this fall’s municipal election.

Based on polling by Ipsos Reid, voter support for the B.C. Greens grew from nine percent in the 2005 provincial election to 16 percent in June 2008. Support for the Liberals stood at 47 percent in June, compared with 46 percent during the last election. Backing for the NDP slipped from 42 percent in 2005 to 33 percent in June.

The Greens consider the B.C. Liberal government’s new carbon tax a good start to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, while the NDP is leading an axe the tax campaign.

Stevenson said that Vision Vancouver simply needed time to study Capri’s motion. He offered an explanation as to why the NPA introduced it.

“Sam [Sullivan] is trying to grab the green vote away from us,” Stevenson told the Straight. “He’s trying to show that they’re great green lovers.”

B.C. Green leader Jane Sterk, who is also an Esquimalt township councillor, wasn’t aware of Capri’s motion. “The fact that it’s going to be discussed at the Vancouver council table, I think, is a step forward for the Green party,” Sterk said.