Former Conservative MP in bid for mayor’s chair
Wai Young, the former Conservative MP for Vancouver South, has finally made her bid for the Vancouver mayor’s chair official.
In a Thursday news conference in front of several dozen supporters outside Vancouver City Hall, Young declared that she does not have a political agenda.
“I am not on the payroll of big business or developers. I do not have to answer to unions or special interest groups,” she said before saying she would bring better community consultation. “I cannot be bought.” Young is looking to launch a new party called Coalition Vancouver, but no other candidates have as yet been identified.
While Young made her candidacy official on Thursday, she’s been quietly running fundraisers for months.
On Thursday, Young said she would campaign for a clean and efficient city and would oppose “excessive taxation.” She said much of Vancouver’s affordability problems were because “taxes surround us and are increasing every time around.”
“The average Vancouverite is barely able to make ends meet.”
Wai declared that she would not install any new bike lanes without removing a currently existing one and also vowed to remove the bike lanes being built near VGH and on the Cambie Bridge. She also said she’s opposed to the proposal to build a wider bike path near Kits Beach.
She called the provincial government’s school tax on homes above $3 million “socialist capital appropriation, in other words, theft.”
“Virtually all of my opponents believe that higher taxes can cure all of Vancouver’s problems.”
Young insisted “there is not one defensible reason to eliminate the Georgia Viaduct,” though a 2015 city report argued that the viaducts were seismically unstable and that their removal would better connect the adjoining neighbourhoods as well as deal with long-standing traffic complaints by residents along Prior Street.
Rumours of her running for mayor first surfaced last summer, when it was expected she would put her name forward as a candidate for the NPA. Last December, she sent a fundraising email bashing Vision Vancouver and Mayor Gregor Robertson.
Thursday, she called the NPA “Vision Lite” and claimed they’d agreed with Robertson and “his failed policies on virtually every issue” — though most city hall observers would say that NPA support for Vision proposals has been a very rare thing.
Young served as one term as Conservative MP for Vancouver South, from 2011 to 2015, defeating Liberal incumbent Ujjal Dosanjh. She had previously lost to Dosanjh in the 2008 federal election by just 20 votes. She lost to the Liberals’ Harjit Sajjan in the 2015 federal election.
A Vancouver resident for 40 years, she has been recognized for her volunteer work by the Vancouver park board and the YWCA.