Oh my: 'Deceit and favouritism'

Over in Vancouver Courier land, my esteemed colleague Mike Howell appears unimpressed that Vision Vancouver refused to show him an advanced copy of their 2008 election financial statements.

"Your dedicated scribe’s efforts to get an early look last week at Vision Vancouver’s campaign finance documents was blindsided by deceit and favouritism," Howell writes, with a certain degree of tongue planted in cheek.

"I’m, apparently, not in the party’s good books."

It seems Howell asked the Visionites for their campaign records. Instead, the party chose to pass it on to the no-less-esteemed Frances Bula, who wrote up a story in Friday's Globe.

"Political parties playing favourites is not news, folks. It happens all the time," Howell writes.

"Vision did this during the campaign, handing over its election platform to the Vancouver Sun - the same paper that had a reporter call up the party in the fall and ask if it had a mayoral candidate."

(I'll leave that point alone.)

"My point here is that I was jerked around," Howell concludes.

Reporters always face a bit of a dilemma when a politico phones up offering an "exclusive" on a story. You find yourself balancing the interests of the story itself, which contain some kernel of intrigue, and the interests of the person offering the story, who undoubtedly benefit from its publishing in some way. If reporters published every "exclusive" offered to them in this city, there would be a whole lot more misinformation flying around.

With that said, no reporter I know earns their keep purely on strategic party leaks. It's a dangerous game, as Howell points out on his blog, one that does no one (except, perhaps, the party themselves) any favours in the long run.

At the same time, I don't begrudge political parties from playing favourites, as it were. Particularly during an election, media coverage is at a premium. As was the case with the election platform leak to the Sun, parties have to juggle pissing off other reporters vs. the benefits of giving an "exclusive." In this case, Gregor Robertson held the front page of the Sun, as did Peter Ladner when the NPA leaked their platform to the Sun one week earlier.

However, I think it's fair to say there were a few reporters who had been covering the political scene all year - including all those weekend AGMs and leadership votes - that were a little miffed when both parties chose to release platforms to a paper that, at that point, had paid little attention to the campaign.

Read the rest of Mike's post here.

And over in NPA land...

From the fine folks at the Non-Partisan Association:

NPA Board Elects New Officers

Dear Members,

Last night, your new NPA Board of Directors elected its officers: Michael Davis, President; Chilwin Cheng and Brian DeMuy, both Vice Presidents; Jeevan Khunkhun, Treasurer; and Manjot Hallen, Secretary.

The entire board has expressed its sincere gratitude to the previous officers. In particular, we thank outgoing President Ned Pottinger for his guidance, time and efforts. He will continue to be involved in the new role of Honorary Past President.

After the defeat of the NPA administration, we believe it is essential to listen to what voters have told us: they expect substantial change. Business as usual is not good enough.

We need to find ways to better engage the public on the issues that are important to them.

We need to engage potential candidates on the issues to discover whether they share the values that define us.

And we need to articulate those values to the public and candidates so they know what the NPA is about:
• Keeping provincial and federal politics out of city hall
• Putting Vancouver first
• Favouring individual initiative over government intervention
• And, most importantly, ensuring that Councillors, Parks Commissioners and School Trustees are not so bound by party dogma that they are unable to make the best decisions for Vancouver.

Since being elected in December, we have been quiet – but we have not been idle. We took some time to explore the various viewpoints on how to move forward, then elected leadership that best reflected our collective views. We think this was an important and worthwhile exercise.

We will now begin some very challenging work: reinforcing our connections to our core supporters; creating new connections that reach through all the diverse communities that make up our great city, and identifying candidates that can represent those communities and win their confidence in our next municipal election. As we move forward, we will need your help.

While we engage in this work, our NPA elected officials—Councillor Suzanne Anton, Park Board Commissioner Ian Robertson and School Board Trustees Carol Gibson and Ken Denike—are contributing to their respective elected boards in ways that we can all be proud of: sometimes critical but always constructive.

In short, your NPA board is active, engaged, and working hard to lay the ground work for the next election. Stay tuned as we start to roll out our new direction—we think it will be worth the wait.

Regards,

Michael Davis

President, Non Partisan Association

And on the sidelines, the NPA retools

For those who pay attention to such things, the Non-Partisan Association is filling more than half the seats on its board at this year's Dec. 29 AGM.

Twenty people, including a Ladner and a De Genova, are running for eleven positions.

Click to read more ...

'I'm not trying to re-fight the election': Ladner

There will now be two parallel investigations into Vancouver’s $100-million Olympic Village loan saga, after council unanimously voted to hire its own lawyer to explore how sensitive city information was leaked.

It extends a controversy that exploded in the middle of the civic election campaign and threatens to drag on as a new council begins its term. The investigation was pushed by NPA Coun. Peter Ladner, who lost a bid for the mayor’s seat this month.

“I'm not trying to re-fight the election here or suggest that this issue was a determining factor in the election. I don't believe it was,” Ladner said.

“But I do think there was an ethical breach here, the likes of which I have never seen since I've been in this council chamber."

Opposition councillors, however, called the move “sour grapes” while voting to support it.

Click to read more ...

Firefighters endorse Robertson, not Dhaliwal; union thinks Geller swell too

Vancouver's firefighters union is endorsing Gregor Robertson for mayor, as well as every single Vision council candidate - but one.

Vision candidate Kashmir Dhaliwal is the only council candidate who didn't get the thumbs up from the union. Instead, IAFF local 18 endorsed the NPA's Michael Geller as its only NPA candidate.

Dhaliwal's omission came down to "familiarity," said union president Rod McDonald.

"We weren't too sure about where we were on him so much," MacDonald said. "We had much more familiarity with the other candidates."

On the other hand, McDonald said firefighters were hopeful that Geller wouldn't be governed by political ideology.

"He seemed to be an open-minded free-thinking type of person," McDonald said. "He just gave us a strong indication that he would vote on issues, rather than by party lines."

Here's a list of the union endorsements:

For Mayor:
Gregor Robertson (Vision)
For Council:
David Cadman (COPE)
George Chow (Vision)
Heather Deal (Vision)
Michael Geller (NPA)
Kerry Jang (Vision)
Raymond Louie (Vision)
Geoff Meggs (Vision)
Andrea Reimer (Vision)
Tim Stevenson (Vision)
Ellen Woodsworth (COPE)

In 2005, the union decided not to back Chow, instead picking the NPA's Kim Capri. Both councillors were elected and are running for re-election.

Firefighters have been without a contract for almost two years now.

"The morale in our department with our members, I have never in my 29 years on the job seen anything like it," McDonald said.

"It's all about our labour relations and the fact our radios don't work properly and we don't get any training ... It goes on and on and on. We're not happy about it."