Finding common ground with other parties ‘critical’ to Vision’s future
Vision Vancouver, which has been hammered by a series of impending exits by high-profile leaders, including Mayor Gregor Robertson, will be seeking to collaborate with other left-leaning progressive parties going into the October election.
“This is a progressive city,” Robertson told the more than 100 party faithful who packed a room at SFU Harbour Centre Monday night for Vision’s annual general meeting.
“We want to see people who will walk the talk on the progressive values. We’ve done that in three elections now in the civic level, so I fully expect we can figure out how to get along and elect fantastic new people to office this fall.”
Robertson said it is “critical” to do what it did in 2008 — when Vision swept into power and progressive parties won about 85 per cent of the seats on council, the school board and park board — and work with parties including COPE, the Green party, OneCity, “anyone who wants to work with us.
“I don’t think the NPA wants to work with us,” he added jokingly.
The AGM comes on the same day Tim Stevenson, a longtime Vision Vancouver councillor, said he will not run in the fall election. Stevenson’s announcement came less than a week after Robertson announced his own departure, what he described Monday as “the toughest decision I had to make in my life.”
Coun. Andrea Reimer has also said she will not run in the next election.
Vision also lost a seat vacated by Geoff Meggs after its candidate, Diego Cardona, finished fifth behind the NPA’s Hector Bremner.
Maria Dobrinskaya, co-chair of Vision, told members Vision will be formally reaching out to the other parties in the coming weeks “to discuss ways we can collaborate in the coming election to ensure electoral success in all three levels of the 2018 elections.”
The impending departure of many longtime councillors and the mayor has triggered a lot of nostalgia and reminiscing over Vision’s last decade for party members, she told Postmedia News before the meeting.
The changes, however, mean more opportunity for new people and fresh voices — a chance to revitalize the party as it pursues what would be its fourth term.
“We haven’t had a lot of exciting, competitive races in the party in a long time,” said Dobrinskaya. “It’s unquestionably a time of massive transition and it’s exciting. I think we are all very curious and open and interested in what’s going to happen the next 10 months.”
Vision plans to launch its nomination process in mid-February and expects them to be completed by the end of June.