Hiring of city councillor could hint at pro-Metro NDP agenda: expert
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 and 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’s 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 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 underserved 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 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 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 the government, and acts as a conduit between the non-partisan civil service and the hyper-partisan premier’s office. Wright was most recently CEO of Central 1 Credit Union.
NDP MLA Carole James said: “People just have huge respect from all political sides for the work that Don Wright has done.”
Kim Henderson, the deputy minister to Premier Christy Clark, will remain head of the public service until the new NDP government is sworn in, likely in two to three weeks, at which point she will be replaced by Wright.
Bob Dewar, who most recently was Horgan’s chief of staff and also the NDP’s election campaign director, will serve as a special adviser to the premier.
Details about the salaries for the positions were not immediately released.
Meggs’s departure means the city will hold a byelection to fill the vacant council seat, city clerk Janice MacKenzie said in a written statement Tuesday afternoon. The charter says city council must appoint a chief election officer “as soon as practicable” and the officer must then set a date for the byelection, which must be on a Saturday no more than 80 days after the officer was appointed.