Not all of the elections in the Greater Vancouver area went well on Saturday night, but I am delighted that Pete Fry took the mayor’s chair in Vancouver. As I believe I have said before, this is not because I have any particular love for Pete Fry or the Vancouver Green party, but because Canada’s electoral system so favours just two parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. (I suppose you could throw in a third, the New Democratic Party [NDP], but other than provincially, they have never formed government. It’s like North Americans are genetically engineered to be able to have the mental capacity to choose between only two parties.) I don’t have any particular hate for either party, and in fact I have voted for both. But why are we restricted to just two parties? (It’s almost worse than the United States, if you can imagine that!) Actually, that’s not even true in municipal elections, where parties regularly sprout and flourish for one election, or if they’re lucky a term, and then disappear. Do you really think CentreBC and OneBC will be here in 2030? I doubt it, but besides the fact that neither will get my vote this time around, I actually would like them to be around, to give more British Columbians a voice.
But even then — back to a couple of points ago — municipal parties are associated with the major federal or provincial parties, just without the legal linkage to make them accountable when municipal politicians say something stupid or, in Sim’s case, show up for Remembrance Day ceremonies in casual clothes.
Anyway, I’ll focus on two major elections in the Lower Mainland in the two biggest cities: Vancouver and Surrey.
In Vancouver, as I said, Pete Fry won the mayor’s job. The timing is perfect (almost), because we’re just about to have a provincial election. I wrote before that apparently some people are “confused”, but to me anyone who is “confused” should do the world a favour and remove themselves from the voting pool. I mean, come on. If you can’t keep the candidates in one election separate from the candidates in another election, then you shouldn’t be voting, because our society shouldn’t be relying on people with such low IQs. (I’m going to start sounding like trump, but I certainly don’t mean to.) But I say that it’s almost perfect timing, because I would like nothing more than to see Pete Fry’s election victory result in more people discovering the Green Party (or taking them seriously), and therefore voting for Emily Lowan, who heads the Green Party of British Columbia. Unfortunately, they aren’t running a candidate in my riding, so I’ll have to vote for the NDP here. I know the NDP have been in power for nine years, and I know that that’s beyond the expiry date of most governments (of any stripe), but look at our options: The BC Conservative are in disarray (and are mostly former Christy Clarke BC Liberals), CentreBC would normally get my vote if it wasn’t for their preponderance of former BC Liberals, and I can’t give OneBC the time of day, because they would take us back to the Stone Age in an instant. The BC Liberals were in power for way over a decade, and we’re still paying for their mistakes, as anyone who relies on the George Massey Tunnel will tell you.
In Surrey, the whole population seems to have taken a big, long sniff of cocaine right before they voted. I’m sorry, who could have predicated that outcome?! Doug McCallum at least made one good decision, and that was to name his deputy mayor during his acceptance speech, because in one of the interviews with a TV station afterwards, he seriously looked like he was going to have a heart attack. I predict he won’t even complete one year of his term. That’s not a hope, it’s a prediction. That’s all I have to say about the Surrey election, but thank god I don’t live in Surrey anymore.
And, unrelated to BC municipal elections, I hear tonight that Alberta has made the right decision, and one that 90% of the pundits had predicted. I suppose there was value in giving the separatists their moment in the spotlight, but all these separation referenda are tiresome. Let’s wait for a real reason to have another one.
I’ll see you this weekend when British Columbians will decide whether or not to show the incumbents the door. This is looking likely, and Eby will only have himself to blame. Unfortunately, British Columbians won’t take any other parties seriously, to their own peril.