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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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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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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Always instructive to get the view from far away.

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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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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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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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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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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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We never used to pay much attention to the city’s financial statements, except for a cursory brief on what the total budget was or some quirky expenditure. Now, it’s an annual event to see where the city is with the Olympic Village and the $750-million construction loan it took out to pay for it. My [...]

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