Park board’s Constance Barnes hopes to challenge MP Hedy Fry in Vancouver Centre
One of the most exciting matches in next year’s federal elections may be fought in Vancouver Centre.
Park commissioner Constance Barnes could spoil plans by long-time Liberal MP Hedy Fry for an eighth consecutive term in the downtown riding.
Barnes has topped the election for Vancouver park board twice in a row, but she isn’t running in the municipal election this fall. She’s eyeing a federal NDP nomination for a shot at Fry, first elected in 1993, then a rookie who defeated a sitting prime minister, Kim Campbell of the Conservatives. With no other candidates stepping forward, Fry was acclaimed last March 14 as Liberal candidate for 2015.
“I have great respect for Hedy and the amount of years that she’s put in,” Barnes told the Straight by phone on Tuesday (April 8). “But I have fresh ideas. I have a new outlook. And I think it’s time. This riding has changed vastly. It’s time to look at this riding in a different way.”
Barnes wants to talk about affordable housing, child care, freeing whales and dolphins from captivity, and oil tankers on Burrard Inlet and English Bay.
“One of the big things I’m hearing a lot of—because I’ve already been talking to a lot of people and standing on street corners—is [housing] affordability for seniors—in the West End, especially,” Barnes said. “Another big issue is [housing] co-ops and what’s going to happen in 2017 when the [federal] subsidies stop.”
On the issue of captive whales and dolphins, Barnes has added her name to a petition asking city hall to let voters decide in conjunction with the November 2014 municipal election whether to free cetaceans on display by the Vancouver Aquarium. “I think, federally, this country needs to look at phasing out whales and dolphins, cetaceans, in captivity,” she said.
As a child-care advocate, Barnes also wants to press for a $10-a-day model at the national level.
She promises to be a strong voice against a plan to increase oil-tanker shipments in Vancouver waters: “One spill and that’s it.”
Vancouver Centre is not a federal NDP playground, alternating mostly between Liberal and Conservative. Two of Fry’s defeated NDP opponents—Bill Siksay and Kennedy Stewart—went on to become MPs in Burnaby.
However, on a provincial level, there used to be the electoral districts of Vancouver Centre and Vancouver-Burrard. Both were represented by Barnes’s father, Emery, who became the first black speaker of the B.C. legislature.
In 2012, Barnes failed to be nominated as the B.C. NDP candidate for Vancouver–False Creek in an upset that raised a lot of eyebrows.
Fry wasn’t available for comment before the Straight’s deadline.
Comments
13 Comments
Erica
Apr 8, 2014 at 5:45pm
What is she thinking? She ran for Vision, ran for the provincial NDP, lost, kept her Park Board job, and now is running for the federal NDP? Get a life.
Fern Jeffries
Apr 8, 2014 at 7:54pm
Constance has a life -- it's a life of long time public service. She has been most effective has a Parks Board Commissioner and will be sorely missed by our community.
She is a lifelong member of the New Democratic Party. Unlike other party's which differentiate between provincial and federal arms, the NDP has a joint membership. As readers will know, the Parks Board position will terminate in November, long before the next federal election. So it's very unclear to me what Erica is complaining about.
Daniel T
Apr 8, 2014 at 9:07pm
Truthfully, I haven't heard a thing from Hedy Fry since the last election. Is she still alive?
But Constance is a woman of principle. Good for her I hope she wins.
HellSlayerAndy
Apr 8, 2014 at 11:06pm
No chance whatsoever.
Bonus!
She is a high profile candidate that will take resources and bodies from candidates that might have a chance.
NDP...what's the excuse this time.
Red Tories 'strategic voting' for Harper's Blue Tories coz the Liberals are WAY worst for Canada? Ha
Stephen Fry
Apr 8, 2014 at 11:27pm
Hedy is a disgrace. She's just your typical politician, eating from a taxpayer-funded trough. Time to go.
CCF
Apr 9, 2014 at 12:51am
The NDP should stop wasting its energy and resources in helping the Harper Conservative by running against the Federal Liberals and focus on seats it can win, on the Island and in the interior, where the conservative/reform/Canadian alliance party has almost erased the NDP off the Map for years. In the next election with the realignment, the only NDP seat in the interior seems as good as gone.
Those saying Hedy Fry is a disgrace(the voters that matter don't seems to agree) or where is she. Do you follow the news? she is probably the most recognizable BC MP at any parliamentary committee hearings or policy debates. The strongest voice of dissent against Harper cons with the exception of Peter Julian maybe.
Cameron D
Apr 9, 2014 at 8:01am
"fair and balanced" article that forgets to say that Constance Barnes got drunk and drove her car into someone's house while in office.
MD
Apr 9, 2014 at 9:30am
@CCF
"Do you follow the news? she is probably the most recognizable BC MP at any parliamentary committee hearings or policy debates"
Then she can explain the Liberal Party of Canada's contribution to the decline of the Canadian middle class over the past thirty years, as well as their habit of talking about reducing income equality and proceeding to then do everything they can from a policy perspective to increase it.
There is not a substantive difference electing a Liberal or a Conservative, except in the minds of each other.
MD
Apr 9, 2014 at 9:32am
DanielT
"But Constance is a woman of principle. Good for her I hope she wins"
As long as that principle isn't doing what the greater left expected of Gordon Campbell, and resign for a DUI.
As a federal NDP voter, happy she is not in my riding, as I would not support her, simply over that alone.
Hyper partisan hypocrisy kills a healthy democracy.
Mark
Apr 9, 2014 at 2:57pm
Any time a Vision member talks about housing affordability I really can't stop laughing. Since Gregor Robertson has taken office, housing costs have been spiraling out of control.