Where’s the vision in Vision Vancouver? I was asking myself that question this week after Vision Vancouver councillor Kerry Jang told the Georgia Straight that there will be no referendum in the 2011 election on changing Vancouver’s at-large system.

The at-large system, in which councillors are elected on a citywide basis, benefits candidates with Chinese surnames and undermines the chances of candidates with South Asian names.

We don’t know if the at-large system also harms candidates with Philippine or Arab or Eastern European or Latino surnames because none have run for Vancouver city council in recent years with any of the three major parties.

We saw the Chinese-surname-as-a-benefit  as early as 1993 when a complete unknown, Jenny Kwan,  was the only COPE council candidate elected. She listed her name as Jenny Wai-Ching Kwan on the ballot.

The only NPA council candidate who was defeated in 1993—and by a large margin—was Daljit Singh Sidhu, who has a South Asian name.

Kwan turned out be a good politician, but she probably would have had to try at least one more time to get elected if she didn’t have a Chinese surname.

Sidhu, on the other hand, has no chance of getting elected to Vancouver city council—and proved it again in 2008—because of his South Asian surname.

Let's look at the school board. Allan Wong, a COPE school trustee, consistently tops or comes near the very top of the COPE slate. Of those who had never been elected before, the NPA's Sophia Woo was the top performing NPA school board candidate  on her slate in 2008.  

Meanwhile, COPE’s Alvin Singh and the NPA’s Dr. Lakhbir Singh, who both have South Asian surnames, trailed their parties’ next lowest-ranking school board candidate by significant margins in 2008.

Jang, a political rookie of Chinese descent, topped all other non-incumbents  in the 2008 council race. Vision Vancouver incumbents Raymond Louie and George Chow came first and third respectively in 2008.  

The only Vision Vancouver council candidate with a South Asian surname, Kashmir Dhaliwal, was also the only one who went down to  defeat.

The reality is that there are some voters in Vancouver who cast ballots along ethnic lines.

In the 2006 census, about 30 percent of Vancouver's population was of Chinese descent, and it’s widely dispersed across the city. The South Asian and Filipino populations are smaller and are far more geographically concentrated.

Vision Vancouver appears to want to cement the at-large system—which benefits Chow, Jang, and Louie—at least until the 2014 election; that will be the effect of not having a referendum in 2011.

In this regard, Vision Vancouver is no different than the NPA.  Neither party wants candidates elected in neighbourhood constituencies, notwithstanding what Vision Vancouver politicians have said in the past.

The Vision Vancouver caucus hasn’t  even said that it  will support a system  in which  some candidates are  elected at-large and some are elected in wards.

They're hiding behind  an illegitimate 2004 plebiscite that defeated a ward system. In this contest, there were no campaign spending limits and  no disclosure rules.  

The mayor at the time, Larry Campbell, and the most powerful councillor at the time, Jim Green, did virtually nothing to support a "yes" vote for wards.

With  its current  position, Vision Vancouver is telling every person of South Asian descent in the city that there is no point in running for city council in Vancouver.

The Vision councillors  have kissed off any future chance of Raj Hundal, the Vision Vancouver chair of the Vancouver park board, of ever getting elected to council. It's disgraceful.

Any progressive person in Vancouver with a South Asian surname should seriously consider  ripping up their Vision Vancouver party cards. Their non-South Asian spouses, including Vision Vancouver park commissioner  Aaron Jasper, should do the same.

I have no doubt that Vision  Vancouver's appalling and indefensible position will be judged very harshly by future historians.

Earlier this month, the UN independent expert on minorities, Gay McDougall, came to Vancouver. In her preliminary remarks on Canada, she said that minorities are “extremely poorly represented in political structures” at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels.

McDougall declared that much more attention should be given to this issue by all political actors, including political parties, to improve the representation of minorities.

Vision Vancouver has failed this test by wanting to ensure that Vancouver is the last major city in Canada to retain the antidemocratic at-large system.

Let's hope that  McDougall brings this up in her final report to the UN Human Rights Council next March so the world will recognize the  injustice of Vision Vancouver’s stance.