(The following article is from the December 1-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

PV Vancouver Bureau

Once again, Vancouver civic politics has seen a stunning about-face, with the latest meltdown of the governing right-wing Non-Partisan Alliance. After overwhelming victories during the 1990s, the NPA was nearly wiped off the map by the Coalition of Progressive Electors in 2002, only to regain control of City Hall, School Board and Park Board three years later.

     But in the Nov. 15 municipal election, the NPA suffered another humiliating setback, reduced to just one member on City Council, plus two school trustees and one parks commissioner.

     The big winner was Vision Vancouver, the centrist group launched by ex-COPE members several years ago. Led by successful mayoralty candidate Gregor Robertson, a former NDP MLA, Vision also took seven council seats, four on School Board, and four on Park Board.

     Meanwhile, COPE defied predictions of its demise. Both COPE candidates for City Council, David Cadman and Ellen Woodsworth, were elected, along with three school trustees (veteran incumbents Alan Wong and Al Blakey, plus Jane Bouey, who served in 2002-2005) and incumbent parks commissioner Loretta Woodcock.

      Another significant result was the election of Green Party candidate Stuart McKinnon to the Park Board, largely due to the Vision-COPE-Green cooperation agreement for the Nov. 15 election.

     Vision candidate Ken Clement became Vancouver's first Aboriginal school trustee, a historic breakthrough. But on the negative side was the continued pattern of racism against South Asian candidates, almost all of whom finished at the bottom of their respective slates.

     After turning back a section of members who rejected the concept of a centre-left alliance against the NPA, COPE mounted a campaign last summer to press Vision for electoral unity. Failure to reach such a deal, most realised, would spell defeat for both Vision and COPE. With the crucial support of the Vancouver and District Labour Council and other sections of the labour movement, as well as NDP elected officials, the unity effort paid off with an agreement signed in early September. While the agreement gave the larger Vision Vancouver the lion's share of nominations, it also helped COPE to elect six of its nine candidates. The role of the Labour Council, which printed thousands of Vision-COPE-Green "slate cards", was particularly critical for the outcome.

     The results leave COPE in a strong position to influence decision-making at City Hall. Cadman and Woodsworth have made it clear that they hope to work closely with the Vision majority to tackle the urgent problems of homelessness and inadequate public transit. But the two will also be free to stake out independent positions if Mayor Robertson and his caucus yield to powerful pressures from the developers and other business interests.

     Several early indicators may show the direction of the new Vision majority. One concerns the City Hall bureaucracy, which escaped a shake-up after the 2002 election. This time, there are growing demands to remove City Manager Judy Rogers, widely seen as a pro-developer figure and a potential brake on progressive policies.

     Another test will be the fate of the Olympic athletes village in False Creek. Faced with financial problems, the project's private developers received a $100 million loan from the city following a secretive Council meeting in mid-October. That episode sealed the fate of the NPA, which was blamed by angry citizens for handing out huge wads of taxpayer dollars. Now there are calls to restore the project's social housing component, which was largely gutted by the former NPA administration, as a first step towards dealing with the city's housing crisis.

     Yet another struggle is brewing over the fate of Little Mountain, a six-hectare social-housing development built in the post-war years. A deal was struck last year to sell the site to a developer, demolish its 224 units, and build a 2,000-condominium project, with profits from the sale to fund social housing across B.C. The residents have been evicted, but new construction has been delayed by financial problems affecting Holborn Development, the private company.

     Woodsworth and Cadman will push to re-open the site's empty but habitable units when the new City Council takes office. But Vision councillors are more cautious, calling for discussions with the province and the developer to explore ways of using the site. "All we as a city can do is ask," Vision councillor Raymond Louie told The Province newspaper.

     If Rogers stays and the False Creek project remains under the full control of profit-hungry developers, the message will be that nothing substantial will change at City Hall. But swift action on these issues would signal that Robertson and his caucus intend to carry through on progressive election commitments.

     At School Board, the COPE trustees will form a majority with their four Vision counterparts. Although the latter are expected to use their numbers to elect the chair of the VSB, COPE's more experienced trustees will likely play key roles as chairs of important committees in the Board's structure.

     The outgoing NPA majority on the VSB were notorious for refusing to question the Campbell government's anti-public education policies. That will quickly change, with the Vision-COPE majority moving to help boost province-wide demands for improved school funding by trustees, the BC Teachers' Federation, parents, and students. This struggle will be difficult in the current economic downturn, but the new Board are vocal advocates for public education and the needs of students and teachers, an issue which could prove important in BC's May 2009 provincial election campaign.