Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson says he’s progressive

Mayor Gregor Robertson says he plans to focus on “progressive issues” during his third term. In a year-end interview with the Georgia Straight in his spacious, wood-panelled office at Vancouver City Hall, Robertson said his top priorities are affordable housing and promoting a 10-year transit plan endorsed by Vancouver mayors.

“From homelessness to low- to middle-income affordable housing, that whole spectrum of housing needs ongoing focus and that will be a huge piece of work,” Robertson said.

The transit plan includes more bus service and a subway along Broadway from VCC–Clark Station to Arbutus Street. The 5.1-kilometre underground line will only be built if voters approve next year’s transit referendum and if the federal and provincial government each contribute one-third of the estimated $2-billion cost.

When asked if the Conservatives need to be defeated next year for Vancouver to get a new subway, the mayor sidestepped the question. Instead, he emphasized that the country’s future depends on all federal parties recognizing the importance of cities.

“We need the next government of Canada to be very supportive of urban priorities—transit first and foremost,” Robertson said. “Affordable housing is essential as well, to have more federal support.”

He said that there is still a “ton more capacity in existing zoning along Broadway”, saying the corridor has not been built out to levels already approved under council’s policy. However, he hinted that if the subway is approved, there could be more changes in the future.

“There will be opportunities for the community to look at next steps with Broadway in the context of rapid transit coming,” he acknowledged. “You know, we’ll have to gauge the timing on that. The referendum is the priority right now. We have to get the referendum approved and ensure we have a clear signal from local voters that the province and the feds need to step up and fund the whole package. At that point, we’ll have a good sense of our destiny.”

In addition, the mayor stated that voters supported candidates in the last election who favour more childcare and want to address climate change, whether they ran for Vision Vancouver, the Greens, or the Coalition of Progressive Electors.

“We got good validation from voters on those issues,” Robertson said. “The vote was split between Vision, COPE, and Greens, but all, I think, are rallying around that set of progressive issues that needs attention in Vancouver.”

Robertson claimed that the Non-Partisan Association hasn’t grown in popularity, even though the party’s mayoral candidate, Kirk LaPointe, attracted 15,000 more votes than the previous NPA mayoral candidate, Suzanne Anton. LaPointe attracted almost 25,000 more votes than 2008 NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner.

“NPA voters tend to vote the entire NPA ticket in every election, and their base of support hasn’t grown much for many years, whereas the progressive vote continues to grow significantly,” Robertson alleged. “But people spread their votes around Vision, COPE, and Green. That ended up costing us some amazing diverse young candidates that would have been great for our city. We lost diversity on council, school, and park board, and that’s not reflective of who Vancouver is now.”

Two-thirds of Vision Vancouver’s white candidates were elected, whereas only three of its nine candidates of colour—school trustee Allan Wong and councillors Raymond Louie and Kerry Jang—were successful. Among the defeated Vision candidates of colour were incumbents Niki Sharma, Tony Tang, Cherie Payne, and Ken Clement.

“So that’s a concern, when the vote split among progressive parties results in the NPA winning more seats and an overall loss of diversity and youth,” Robertson said. “That’s really troubling. But, you know, it’s hard. We didn’t have success rebuilding the coalition we’d had in 2008 and 2011. So the vote split was costly for progressive issues.”

The mayor noted that Vision Vancouver lured some COPE supporters, including school trustee Allan Wong, into its camp before the election. But even though five 2011 COPE candidates ran for other parties in this campaign, COPE still attracted a large number of votes.

“Many people considered COPE to be much farther left than ever before and the NPA farther right than ever before, but votes ended up going there with both COPE and Green,” he said. “Those brands attracted votes. My work is clearly to continue demonstrating that Vision is all about progressive issues: transit and housing and greening our city, childcare, reconciliation. That’s what we’re all about.”