Vancouver set to benefit from NDP gov’t: Expert
VICTORIA – With the first hires of their new government, the B.C. NDP have sent a signal that their goals align with the province’s largest city and its ruling Vision Vancouver party.
Three-term City of Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs has become NDP premier-designate John Horgan’s chief of staff, the NDP announced Tuesday.
Meggs has resigned his seat on city council to assume the new job. He previously worked as former NDP premier Glen Clark’s director of communications, executive director of the B.C. Federation of Labour and was a founding member of Vision Vancouver. Most recently, he co-chaired the NDP’s election platform development committee.
Meggs’ hiring suggests the B.C. NDP government may be more sympathetic to the needs of the Vancouver area, compared with the previous Liberal government which focused more on the rest of the province, said Gordon Price, a former Vancouver councillor and director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. The Liberal government tended to treat Vancouver with “benign neglect,” Price said, especially on issues like housing and transit.
Those two specific issues were highlighted in a statement issued Tuesday from the office of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, praising Meggs for his “strong leadership on issues like affordable housing and transit.”
Meggs, asked Tuesday if the urbanites of Metro Vancouver had been under-served by the previous provincial government, said: “I think if you look at the election results, you can draw your own conclusions,” adding that Horgan’s platform commitments “resonated a lot with people in the Lower Mainland.” In the May provincial election, the B.C. NDP won eight ridings in the City of Vancouver compared to the Liberals’ three.
Asked if the NDP’s values align with those of Vision Vancouver, Meggs said: “I think that there’s a lot in common, and I think the objectives John Horgan set out in his campaign are ones that would be very much supported by lots of people in Vancouver — and in fact, they were.”
Meggs said he has personally grown and changed in the two decades since he worked in the provincial NDP government in the 1990s, and “anyone who thinks this is back to the past has just been asleep themselves and hasn’t been paying attention.”
The B.C. Liberals made a “huge mistake” during this year’s election campaign by focusing their messaging on the B.C. NDP government of the 1990s, Meggs said, adding they were “trying to fight old battles that most people — especially people under 30 — can’t even remember, while refusing to speak to the real needs for affordability and a more positive approach in the province generally.”
The NDP also announced former B.C. Institute of Technology president Don Wright will serve as deputy minister to Horgan and head of the public service. That is the top bureaucratic position in government, and acts as a conduit between the non-partisan civil service and the hyper-partisan premier’s office. Most recently Wright was CEO of Central 1 Credit Union.