ROBERTSON ERA ENDING
Vancouver’s longest-serving mayor announces this term will be his last
If you ask some of those close to him, Gregor Robertson will be remembered as a mayor whose big ideas and bold aspirations, despite criticism, made Vancouver a more sustainable, inclusive and modern city during his decade in power.
But Robertson, speaking hours after announcing he wouldn’t seek re-election in October’s municipal election, wasn’t quite ready to comment on his legacy.
“Ask me in a year,” Robertson told Postmedia News in a phone interview Wednesday. “I feel like I still have lots to accomplish in this final year. I hope my best work isn’t done yet.”
Robertson’s top priorities in his last 10 months in the mayor’s chair, he said, are moving forward with affordable-housing initiatives and major transit projects, including the Broadway subway expansion.
Both issues have been central to Robertson’s work as mayor ever since he was first elected in 2008 with Vision Vancouver, a progressive civic party founded three years earlier. When his current term comes to a close, Robertson’s 10 years in power will be the longest consecutive tenure by any Vancouver mayor.
“We’ve faced lots of criticism on the usual political fronts, but I don’t really have regrets. We’ve been very clear about our priorities for the city and we’ve been elected three times and worked hard to deliver on our commitments,” Robertson said. “There’s always regrets you could have done more or gone farther, but I know me and the Vision team have put everything into it and I think the city’s all the better for it.
“People might not always agree with my priorities,” Robertson said. “Where we faced the most challenges, with affordable housing and homelessness, we took a lot of heat over too much development or modular housing in certain neighbourhoods, but the people of Vancouver shaped those commitments and elected us to deliver them.”
WHO WILL VISION RUN? A9 WATCH A VIDEO ON ROBERTSON’S TENURE AT VANCOUVERSUN.COM
Judy Graves was a one-time supporter of Robertson who turned into a critic. A longtime city employee who served as an advocate for the homeless under Robertson, Graves said she was full of optimism when the former NDP MLA for Vancouver-Fairview was elected mayor in 2008 with a pledge to end street homelessness by 2015 as a central plank of his campaign.
Last year’s statistics revealed Vancouver had a homeless population of 2,138, the largest in the region, and 35 per cent higher than the 2008 homeless count of 1,576.
In Graves’ view, actions taken by the Vision-controlled council in recent years “actually increased homelessness and decreased the little remaining housing stock” for people on low incomes.
Graves described Robertson as someone with good intentions who “got some bad advice” on the housing and homelessness crisis.
But some of the criticism Robertson faced was unfair, said Mike Harcourt, an adviser and friend of Robertson and a former Vancouver mayor himself.
Robertson has “been unfairly maligned that he didn’t solve the homeless problem,” Harcourt said, adding the city made progress on the issue as best it could over the last decade with limited help from senior governments, “but now we’re housing the rest of the country’s homeless problem.”
“I felt like (Robertson) was swimming up Niagara Falls,” trying to deal with provincial Liberal and federal Conservative governments that were unsympathetic to urban issues, Harcourt said.
Still, Harcourt said, Robertson will be remembered as a leader of “big ideas” in the tradition of those predecessors who decided to create Stanley Park or stop freeway construction in Vancouver.
“He’s in that tradition of a bigidea mayor,” Harcourt said. “And that, of course, sparks controversy.”
Vision Coun. Andrea Reimer said Robertson will be remembered for moving the conversation forward on issues like sustainability.
Reimer worked closely with Robertson to craft the greenest city plan, which, she said, will be a central part of his legacy.
While bicycle infrastructure was a particularly frequent point of criticism of Robertson’s fiercest opponents and critics, Reimer predicted “10 years from now, people will think, ‘Wow, you didn’t used to have bike lanes?’ Societies evolve. It will seem impossible that we didn’t have these things.”
Joel Solomon, chairman of venture-capital firm Renewal Funds and a longtime Vision backer, said Wednesday: “It’s been a historical administration and mayoralty and council.”
“It’s been of epic proportions, the contributions and the impact that this 10 years has had,” Solomon said. “It’s going to be very, very hard to replace Gregor.”
Robertson told Postmedia he had no immediate plans.
“It’s been 27 years since I’ve taken any significant time off, and I don’t know where those decades went,” he said.
“I’m looking forward to getting a break after the term’s done. It’s a pressure cooker,” the former farmer and entrepreneur said. “But being the mayor of Vancouver is the best job I’ve had by far ... It’s a dream job.”
I felt like (Robertson) was swimming up Niagara Falls. … He’s in that tradition of a big-idea mayor … and that, of course, sparks controversy.