Collegiality reigns as new Vancouver council starts work
Mayor notes record number of female councillors
The recurring themes were collaboration, co-operation and collegiality in the speeches on Monday afternoon as Vancouver’s new mayor and council were sworn in.
Then, in the evening, at least for the first council meeting of their four-year term, they put those principles into practice. Following an invitation-only ceremony Monday afternoon in which Mayor Kennedy Stewart and his 10-member council took their oaths of office, Stewart chaired his first meeting. Council named its members to a number of positions, including deputy mayor and council’s representatives to regional bodies.
Stewart, the first independent politician in three decades to sit in the Vancouver mayor’s chair unaffiliated with a political party, presided over a brisk meeting. It featured a string of unanimous votes.
Only two councillors were re-elected last month, the Greens’ Adriane Carr and the NPA’s Melissa De Genova. The other eight are newcomers: the NPA’s Rebecca Bligh, Lisa Dominato, Colleen Hardwick and Sarah Kirby-Yung, the Greens’ Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, COPE’s Jean Swanson and OneCity’s Christine Boyle.
“Our new city council has a very interesting mix of people, with varied backgrounds and experiences,” said Libby Davies, the former NDP MP for Vancouver East, who was the MC for the inaugural ceremony. “I think it’s fair to say that the eyes of Vancouver are upon you, to see what you do, both individually and collectively,” she told the new councillors.
“There is no clear majority from any one group and so, for the first time in many years — well, decades — there is no sure bet about anything. This presents a unique challenge that might unsettle some people. But it also produces an opportunity to be a city council that breaks through partisan histories and traditions, to find ways of learning and co-operating.”
Soon after the afternoon’s ceremony, council met at city hall to vote on appointments. For deputy mayor, Stewart had recommended a roster of nine of the 10 councillors taking turns in the role, rotating monthly. The only councillor who will not take a turn as deputy mayor is Swanson; she said it was at her request.
“I told Kennedy I felt my work was with tenants, low-income and working folks, homeless folks,” Swanson said. She had asked Stewart to be on two committees, and he recommended her for one of them.
Carr moved an amendment Monday, asking to appoint Swanson to the City of Vancouver’s public housing corporation, as Swanson was not one of the four appointees the mayor had recommended. The amendment passed with unanimous support, including from the mayor.
The NPA’s De Genova was appointed to chair the standing committee on city finance and services. The Greens’ Adriane Carr will chair the standing committee on policy and strategic priorities. Vancouver’s representatives on the Metro regional board are Stewart, Carr, De Genova, OneCity’s Boyle, the Greens’ Wiebe, and the NPA’s Hardwick and Dominato.
Four years ago, then-mayor Gregor Robertson recommended filling all of those positions with councillors from his own party, Vision Vancouver.
In his inaugural speech at Monday afternoon’s ceremony, Stewart commented on the record-setting eight female councillors, which he called “a tremendous outcome,” expressing his hope to make Vancouver “a more woman-friendly city.”
“But our council does not reflect the ancestral diversity of our city,” Stewart continued. “For example, not a single person of Chinese, South Asian or Filipino descent holds a council seat. And this imbalance deeply concerns me. As such, to the over 50 per cent of our population whose ancestry is not represented, I make this promise: I will do everything I can to reach out to your communities.”
Council’s regular meetings are set to begin next week.