Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson can be forceful about the issues he has convictions on, but something I’ve noticed over the years is how poorly he handles questions where he thinks he might be accused of doing something wrong but he isn’t quite sure.

That was on display full force Sunday, when the mayor was asked about the audio recording made at a union meeting recently, where Geoff Meggs assured union leaders that the mayor had re-committed to a position of not contracting out any new services. Later, after Meggs and three other members of the Vision team had left, the union talked about who it would support with campaign-finance donations. Vision was the big winner, although COPE, OneCity and PEP (the last two being COPE breakaways), got some too.

Bob Mackin got the audio recording, presumably from a CUPE 1004 member, which you can listen to here and here. (Can’t imagine who that union member might have been, ha ha — see previous stories on CUPE 1004.)

The mayor could have come up with a number of reasonable-sounding arguments and even a counter-attack –i.e. was the NPA planning to privatize city services? A red herring, but, hey, that’s what campaigns are all about.

Instead, he flopped and floundered. He tried to turn the argument to the NPA’s detail-free platform. (People started jeering.) He implied, both in the debate and the scrum afterwards, that somehow Meggs was down there on his own doing some kind of freelance policy improvisation. He didn’t even seem to know that it’s been his own party’s longstanding policy not to add to what is already contracted out. He said there was no iron-clad commitment on that. (My story here.)

Robertson “clarified” all of that this morning. In the meantime, the NPA went out in full force this morning, talking about a corrupt union deal, while other anti-Vision types have been on the phone to me suggesting this is a criminal act of influence peddling.

For those wondering what it takes to be charged with actual influence peddling, a couple of examples here and here.

A look back in history:

Oct. 20

Mayor Gregor Robertson pledged Wednesday a Vision Vancouver council will institute a moratorium on expanded gambling in the city if reelected on Nov. 19.

Saying citizens had made it clear they don’t favour destination casinos, Robertson said his council “would ignore” any future studies that support the expansion of gambling in Vancouver for as long as they are in power.

Robertson made his announcement – the first announcement his party has made in advance of the Nov. 19 civic election – against the backdrop of BC Place.

Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun

Oct. 25

Vancouver’s two major political parties will launch similar but divergent economic platforms Tuesday for the Nov. 19 civic election, heavy on the reduction of red tape and the creation of a business-friendly environment.

Vision Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton both say their platforms will focus on job growth, and they’re using a Vancouver Board of Trade debate, the first major debate of the election, to highlight their plans.

Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun

Oct. 26

Protesters camping out on the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery for a second week are likely headed for a showdown with the city and Mayor Gregor Robertson less than a month before he goes to the polls to try to keep his job.

“Once it starts to look less like a temporary five-day protest and more like a permanent encampment, the mayor will have no choice but to move in,” said University of Victoria political science professor emeritus Norman Ruff.

“The mayor was likely hoping the situation would resolve itself, but that looks more and more unlikely,” said Ruff.

Meanwhile, Occupy Vancouver protesters spilled into the mayoral debate at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus Tuesday night.

Susan Lazaruk, The Proince

It’s tough to be on the political stage. A real testing ground where previously unknown (to the public) aspects of someone’s personality come out. Some critics say campaigns are a terrible process for deciding on candidates, since they’re scrutinized for the smallest and sometimes most picayune things. On the other hand, the campaign crucible does show how they respond to pressure, whether it’s over serious issues or ridiculous non-issues. I’ve always wondered whether I would survive intact, given my numerous personality defects, including the short fuse.

In this campaign, we’re seeing how both of the main candidates are dealing with that. We also see how well they defend some of the statements they make. This campaign has been rife with some gigantic whoppers or unprovable generalizations from various candidates. As the weeks go on, reporters are getting less patient with those manipulations of the evidence.

With Gregor Robertson, the public and reporters have some sense of that already because he’s been through a few election cycles. But this is the one where he’s clearly a lot less loved (putting it mildly) than in previous campaigns and he’s a guy who doesn’t deal with criticism well.

So far, it’s been much of the same we’re used to: repetition of stock lines, a heavy amount of eye-rolling (very much on display this week at the first debate) at criticisms, some strange-sounding denials.

For examples, take a look at how he did in the debate held at Langara College last week. Some key questions were from Charlie Smith, asking him if he was involved in any way with the last-minute decision to dump 15 towers into the Grandview-Woodlands plan. (Absolutely not, he said, to the disbelief of many). From Langara student Ash Kelly, asking him about the difficulty accessing city hall to get basic information. From me, asking him about how the city’s policies, which allow developers to pull down old but cheap rental housing and replace it with new and expensive rental housing. (Current examples are rife along Main Street, where redevelopment signs are sitting in front of a string of beat-up looking old fourplexes and small apartment buildings.) I pointed out that, although renters are told they can move back in with some discount on the new rent price, it’s unlikely most (or any) of them can afford that new rent, even discounted. Not the greatest answers to any of them.

But of course, it’s always more interesting to watch the newcomers. And especially someone like Kirk LaPointe, who has been on the other side of the digital recorder, notebook, and camera for most of his life. As some of you may know, he lost it a little bit at the end of a news conference this week, declining to respond to a question from me, saying he didn’t have an answer for it and that it was a “bit of an empty question.” It came at the end of a newser where he’d been challenged quite a bit by several reporters and clearly he had kind of had it.

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I’m a few days late with this, I know. Getting kind of hectic out there.

Anyway, the NPA’s Kirk LaPointe presented the party’s plan on transportation, which was mainly more buses, an “affordable” subway built within five years (or at least aim for that), and something a lot of reporters were intrigued by — counterflow lanes on major commuter routes in Vancouver. My Globe story on it is here.

It was a bit of an odd one. You wouldn’t think it would have appeal for a lot of Vancouver residents, since the counterflow lanes would likely be most appreciated by commuters coming from the east (Burnaby/Coquitlam/North Van), north (West and North Van) and south (Richmond, Surrey, Delta).

Anyway, at least it was a new idea, so we all jumped on it.

After deadline, I got a callback from a couple of people I respect on transportation issues who gave me their assessment of the idea.

One was Dave Rudberg, the city’s former head of engineering under mayor Philip Owen and city manager Judy Rogers. He’s the calmest guy I know and a very straight shooter.

Dave said the city has looked from time to time at counterflow lanes and concluded that they’re not that practical.

In his words: “You’d have to search far and wide to find applications that would work. I wouldn’t dismiss the idea but the application is fairly limited.”

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The city’s swift move to open a shelter at 900 Pacific Street, in advance of any provincial decisions about winter-shelter funding, and to lease the Quality Inn for two years, in the absence of any conversations with the province about support, is a sign of Vision Vancouver ramping things up even further in its aggressive efforts to tackle the homelessness problem.

But local residents only found out about this on the news (yes, some people still watch television, Virginia) and are not thrilled. My story.

Bad news always comes on Fridays in the media world, so there it was on Friday last week, the long-awaited decision from Victoria on whether to approve Metro Vancouver’s new bylaw 280. That was a measure designed to stop garbage trucks from taking waste out of the region to get it buried at cheaper landfills elsewhere.

There will be more fallout from this, I’m sure. In the meantime, waste haulers and companies wanting to build new-style recycling facilities are delighted, Metro Vancouver politicians are livid.

Council accepts Dunbar’s vision for neighbourhood: Planners said rejection of the report, which was opposed by some residents, would have undermined the future of the CityPlan.: [Final Edition]

Ward, Doug. The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 11 Sep 1998: B4.

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Kinda scary, but apparently I was covering CityPlan 20 years ago. A look back in time at some of the real debates going on.

Reaction to city’s urban-village vision of the future not all neighborly: [FINAL C Edition]

Bula, Frances. The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 06 Dec 1994: B3.

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I know this story is going to bring out the hate mail. As well, the timing is weird, coming as it does in the middle of a frenzy of “All our young people are leaving town! There’s nothing for sale under two million!”

But I’ve been intrigued by this for a while, ever since the various young people in my life started to hit their mid-20s and ’30s. And I started to hear about their friends buying. I, like others, had thought every youngster was being driven out of town to Saskatoon. But the stories kept coming in.  Two sisters, friends of my stepdaughter, bought a condo together five years ago, then sold, split the proceeds, and each bought one of their own. The friends of someone else’s son, guys who work in port jobs, have done the same with a condo in North Van. A friend of my niece’s, a young Vietnamese guy from Edmonton who does social marketing for sports events, bought a place in Burnaby a couple of years ago. And, weirdly, they weren’t doing it with big whacks of their parents’ money.

So I’ve wanted to do this story for several years. Even interviewed Matt Kennedy, the young guy in this story, back in 2011 when he first bought. But didn’t get around to doing the story until I saw a hook recently, the Urban Futures analysis of data showing that home ownership among the young and the oldest increased between 2006 and 2011.

My story, of course, has prompted all kinds of comments on the Globe’s site about how it must be just real-estate promotion. (And, I have to say, only in Vancouver would we be profoundly suspicious of a 20-something who saves his money, lives at home, works hard, doesn’t go out, in order to be able to buy a piece of property. In another city, another era, he’d be called a smart and thrifty person.)

There’s no doubt that the young people buying in Vancouver, more so than other places except possibly contemporary Toronto, are settling for smaller spaces, perhaps more precarious footholds. (Strata councils, ack!)

But people who’ve wanted to live in desirable places have done that for a while. I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to move to the suburbs, even though I grew up in North Van and loved it. I have stayed in Vancouver but have had to give up on some other things. I bought a house together with my mother originally. I’ve never been able to buy in exactly the neighbourhoods I wanted. I’ve always had less space, shared space, compromises. I think a lot of people in the city have done that. And, if they didn’t want to make those compromises, they moved to Burnaby, Coquitlam, Surrey, Langley, for the last 50 years.

It’s harder now, I’m not questioning that. Besides the pressures on housing from people outside the market (Americans buying vacation condos, whatever is happening with Chinese capital), one of our issues is we have a generation that wants to live in the city. Previous generations, except for a certain set of oddballs, accepted that they would move to the suburbs when they had kids. This generation is much less happy with that answer. So they’re creating pressure on the market too.

In spite of that, they’re buying in  major metro areas in greater numbers than ever. It might not fit your preconceptions, but unless you’ve decided you don’t believe in statistics, this has to make you think.

The story is also cut and pasted on the next page, for those who can’t get past the wall

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