My account of condo marketer/power broker Bob Rennie’s speech to the development industry, which began with him saying “I told you so” and continued from there. (For those recently living under a rock, Rennie was one of Premier Christy Clark’s most vocal backers, convinced to the last minute she would win.)
The Bob Rennie annual event: “I told you so” + “Two markets, one paycheque”
May 21st, 2013 · 8 Comments
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Municipal politicians a big bloc in new Liberal government — and what will they do with that power?
May 20th, 2013 · 33 Comments
Christy Clark used a card from Gordon Campbell’s book to draft candidates — she plucked them from city councils around the province. As a result, about a dozen new MLAs will be leaving their jobs as mayors and city councillors to sit in Victoria. Here’s my story from this week on what a few of […]
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Green NDP candidates win in Vancouver, surge in West Van. What does it mean?
May 15th, 2013 · 147 Comments
I note that the places where the NDP did make a few gains were in particular spots where the NDP candidates managed to combine the usual party line with a green message: West Vancouver-Sea to Sky, where NDP candidate Ana Santos didn’t win, but achieved the biggest gain for any riding in NDP votes. Vancouver-Fairview, […]
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Why vote when you’re in a riding where your candidate has little to zero chance of winning? There’s a reason
May 14th, 2013 · 54 Comments
I’ve always wondering about those dedicated souls who turn out to vote Liberal in Vancouver-Mount Pleasant or Surrey-Green Timbers, or the equally hardy souls who vote in West Vancouver-Capilano, Vancouver-Quilchena or Kelowna-Mission, where there’s not an ice cube’s chance in hell that their candidate will win. My story today takes a look at that phenomenon.
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How Vancouver’s housing solutions get promoted elsewhere
May 14th, 2013 · 1 Comment
Always instructive to get the view from far away.
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Vancouver tests out what many hope will be a non-profit model for building low-cost housing
May 10th, 2013 · 7 Comments
After being stung by four years of criticism about its giveaways to developers to create rental, Vision Vancouver politicians (oops, of course, I should say, “staff”) have decided to test a new model for building rental apartments. The city will give four pieces of land to a consortium of non-profit housing groups and the B.C. […]
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NDP plans to create more low-cost housing but it won’t be the subsidized social housing of the Harcourt/Clark years
May 8th, 2013 · 9 Comments
As many in the media have noticed, there’s been almost no discussion of social issues like health, education, the income gap, or housing in this election campaign. LNG, yes. Rent supplements or welfare rates, no. So here’s something that helps flesh out where the two major parties stand on housing and renter/landlord issues.
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Garbage, garbage, garbage: Private collectors tussle with Metro Van over control of garbage flow
May 3rd, 2013 · 35 Comments
You are going to be reading SO much about garbage in the next few years. Why? Because Metro Vancouver, like many other metro regions, is trying to move to new ways of dealing with it: More recycling, reusing. Fewer landfills. Possibly more incinerators or other strategies for disposing of the last bits that can’t be […]
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Anti-gentrification strategies in the Downtown Eastside get as much attention as the actual gentrification
April 30th, 2013 · 85 Comments
As several other media outlets have reported in bits and pieces over the last couple of weeks, there has been some messy politics surrounding the anti-gentrification protests in the Downtown Eastside. My story here rounds these up, though it only skims the surface of this everything that’s going on. In particular, it doesn’t begin to […]
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Social media in an election campaign: It’s about way more than the likes and follows, all about the data and the conversation
April 29th, 2013 · 23 Comments
Doing anything about strategy during a campaign is excruciating. Hardly anyone wants to talk, unless they think they’ve got nothing to lose. Message box, yes. How we’re going to reach voters? Not so much. So the NDP declined to comment in any way about their social media strategy, in case you’re wondering about the lopsidedness […]
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