It's time for Vision Vancouver politicians to hold real debates in public

On March 26, then-NDP MLA David Chudnovsky delivered a remarkable speech in the legislature. After praising people who helped him learn about transportation, mental-health issues, and homelessness, he moved to the business of the legislature.

He said that  voters send MLAs to govern, but everyone working in the legislature knew that “the real governing takes place in the premier’s office with a few handpicked friends and advisers”.

“We here in this chamber are a kind of sideshow—an important sideshow but a sideshow nonetheless,” Chudnovsky said, according to the Hansard transcript. “We’re part of the show that results in the choice of the next premier in whose office the small group of advisers will again make the important decisions.”

He continued with some more frank talk: “Who’s winning question period? What's the tone in the legislature? Who’s made the best quips this week? Add those questions to the results of the latest polling and the opinions of a few pundits, and presto, we have what passes for politics in British Columbia. Rather than substance, this chamber is filled with sound and sometimes fury, but it signifies not very much.”

Chudnovsky said the people sent MLAs to Victoria to listen to one another, but they don’t.  Citizens sent them to negotiate with one another, but they don’t. “That's mostly because the debate hardly matters,” he declared.

He didn’t seek reelection in 2009. And B.C. voters turned out in record-low numbers in the  May 12  election because the citizens have become disengaged from provincial politics for many of the reasons that Chudnovsky  identified in his speech.

I fear we’re seeing a similar situation unfold in the Vancouver city council chamber, where the Vision Vancouver politicians, with their large majority, invariably vote like sheep whenever a motion comes to the floor.

Their most interesting discussions take place in private in the caucus room—far outside the view of the public. I'm sure there is a brass-knuckle debate, supplemented with input from the mayor's political  Svengali, Mike Magee, and data from their trusty pollster, Bob Penner, president of Strategic Communications.

I wonder if decisions are made with the sole objective of not  enraging residents of the southwest side of Vancouver, who turn out in large numbers on municipal election day.

The ensuing debate in the Vancouver council chamber  is rehearsed, wooden, and so lacking in spontaneity that it fails to engage the  public or even the reporters sent to cover the meetings.

I remember the days when councillors in the same party used to have real debates in the third-floor chamber at Vancouver city hall. People could see different options being presented, which enhanced their understanding and appreciation for democracy. Sometimes, the debate was forceful enough to persuade a politician to change his or her mind.  There was drama because you occasionally never knew the outcome until the last vote was counted.

NPA councillors George Puil, Lynne Kennedy, Gordon Price, and Jennifer Clarke had the self-confidence and sufficient respect for the public not to always lock everything up in private in a caucus room and then present some united front, as if they were members of a labour union. They  sometimes voted independently at the GVRD board, as well.

COPE’s Tim Louis and Fred Bass would not always vote the same way. COPE’s Harry Rankin always had a capacity to surprise. He never relied on pollsters to tell him which way the wind was blowing.

The rot started setting in between 2002 and 2005 when the right-wing faction in COPE started treating municipal politics like provincial politics, and began demanding caucus solidarity. When the left-wing COPE councillors refused to play, that led to the creation of Vision Vancouver.

The situation deteriorated from 2005 to 2008 when the NPA, with its 6-5 majority, imposed caucus solidarity to preserve power.

Early in the Sullivan era, then-rookie NPA councillor Kim Capri voted against the party’s wish to contain the growth of the police department. The NPA councillors lost an important vote.

That spelled the end to expressing serious differences of opinion in public on  major issues.

The Vision Vancouver caucus, with its lopsided majority, has continued in this way after winning the 2008 election.

It's antidemocratic. And it deprives the public and the media of opportunities to get educated about public issues, thereby undermining civic engagement. With its approach, I can only conclude that Vision Vancouver doesn't want the public to pay any attention to what it's doing.

In this environment, the media and the public are more likely   to ignore Vancouver city council because it's boring when all seven councillors and the mayor agree with  each other all the time.

This caucus discipline was understandable when the NPA had a narrow majority. There's no need for this anymore.

I expected a lot more from Vision candidates. Some of them are among the most intelligent politicians ever elected in Vancouver. They're killing the joy in municipal politics in the same way that the two-party system has killed the joy in provincial politics.

To paraphrase Chudnovsky, the elected politicians in Vancouver  who are in the council  chamber are a kind of sideshow.

Democracy withers when it's not nurtured, and tyranny is the eventual outcome. This is the reality we live with  at the provincial level.

Is this what we want in the City of Vancouver as well--the death of democracy? This might not be the intention of some Vision politicians, but in the way they practise politics, they're contributing to that eventual outcome.