. . . oh yes, and votes too. Eventually. Hopefully.
It’s a slow, churning time in the 2018 Vancouver civic election. A time to set foundations, erect platforms, and see how many, if any, voters will come to the party.
In addition to the group we discussed recently on PT (RCCCD), here are a few more attempts to support a candidate or two. Or at least to try to push someone else out of the race.
First: “Vancouverites For Affordable Housing“. Beware, they say, of ex-Federal NDP MP, now Independent Mayoral Candidate Kennedy Stewart. We’re revealing a carefully guarded secret here, they intimate. Don’t’cha know there’s a really big boogeyman in Stewart’s closet (unions), ready to wreak havoc on the hapless citizenry. BEWARE!
In this case it’s not clear who these self-proclaimed saviors are, and repeated attempts to ask for ID go unanswered. But let’s see what we find after trudging around their Facebook posts. We can then take back-bearings, as they say in Le Carre spy novels:
- Slamming Stewart, a top candidate (according to a recent Canseco poll),
- Raising the spectre of boogeymen unions (or at least not wanting them anywhere near power)
- Slamming Vision Vancouver, and by extension another top candidate
- “Fix Housing” as a slogan. (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?)
It certainly looks like astroturf (a fake grass-roots movement) to me, and the people behind it are not so hard to figure out.
Second: Restore Vancouver: A darling of a few of Vancouver’s media players, Steffan Ileman is known for his ability to manufacture quotes and indignation at will. Votes — well, not so effective. But he’s back with a spankin’ new web site, and as founder of the 10th Vancouver Civic election party, making a run for Mayor and council.
Among his less-than-carefully-considered platform items:
- Stop ethnic cleansing: “Vancouver is scene to one of the biggest peacetime mass migrations from a city in world history, a migration in which residents of a city are compelled to leave through a massive foreign intrusion. The words that properly describe this process are ethnic and cultural cleansing.”
- “Declare Vancouver a Heritage City to Be Protected and Preserved.”
- “Establish a referendum-based system for participatory democracy.”
With thanks to Raymond Tomlin at VanRamblings, more quotes apparently from an e-mail sent by Mr. Ileman:
Ileman came to media attention last summer when he led a protest movement against the proliferation of concrete-separated bike lanes that created traffic gridlocks. He says the bike lanes were a diversion from the real issue: build as many cubicles in the sky as possible for sale in Asia. The city council has turned Vancouver into a toxic concrete jungle unprecedented in the city’s history.
And Mr. Tomlin’s reaction:
Gosh, VanRamblings was concerned that in the coming election, voters would have only two choices in Wai Young’s Coalition Vancouver and Fred Harding and Jesse Johl’s Vancouver 1st party for which to cast a ballot if they were opposed to those toxic concrete jungle-creating bike lanes.
Thank goodness that Steffan Ileman and Restore Vancouver have come onto the scene to offer voters a third alternative to ensure that those durn, dastardly, health-creating, environmentally responsible, and wildly popular bike lanes are taken down, and blown to smithereens! More cars we say!
It may be a smoky August, the doldrums of the 2018 civic election period, but something always churns to the top.
