YOUNG MAKES HER APPEAL TO COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
The story of Wai Young ’s recent distracted-driving ticket would have probably been a one-day wonder.
But Coalition Vancouver’s road safety-focused mayoral candidate chose to respond to last week’s Vancouver Sun story with a press release sent to news outlets and a message tagging local journalists on social media.
As The Sun’s Matt Robinson reported Wednesday, Young, who has vowed to crack down on “lawless” cyclists and pedestrians, failed to appear at a scheduled hearing earlier this month over a ticket she received in 2017 for using an electronic device while driving. Coalition Vancouver’s press release said: “In regard to the front-page Vancouver Sun story regarding Wai Young ’s traffic ticket, Wai Young states: ‘I fully support laws governing distracted driving.’”
When The Sun asked Young last week about the ticket, she said the police officer who issued it had mistaken her makeup compact for a phone. Young said she had planned to dispute the ticket, but then had “totally forgotten about it.” Her news release after the story was published said: “Wai Young takes full responsibility for her actions.”
Asked Friday if she wanted to provide any context or additional information about another, earlier ticket she received in 2012 for driving in Vancouver while using an electronic device — and whether she believed the police officer had issued that ticket by mistake as well — Young ’s campaign team replied by email: “She takes full responsibility for any traffic ticket she has been issued.”
In Vancouver’s unusually crowded mayoral race this year, most candidates are campaigning largely on housing issues. But Young, a former Conservative MP for Vancouver South, has stood out with her focus on transportation and her pledge to tear up bike lanes. In an August press release from Young: “Adding to Vancouver’s massive congestion is an absolute disregard for the law on our streets that has grown every year. There is an attitude of entitlement from cyclists and pedestrians and others.”
Young ’s Wednesday night news release also said she “questions why radical Kennedy Stewart was given a pass for being criminally convicted of contempt of court. Why is a woman powdering her nose at a stop light a front-page story versus Socialist Stewart who thinks he’s above the law?”
Stewart, running for mayor this year as an independent, pleaded guilty in May to one count of criminal contempt of court arising from his protest against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline project.
Asked Friday to clarify what she meant about Stewart being “given a pass,” Young replied with an emailed statement saying: “If Kennedy Stewart believes he is above the law now, what does that say about how he might govern if given the power of Mayor? ... This is an election issue and very relevant to the choice Vancouverites are soon going to be making, yet it is getting virtually zero coverage today. That’s wrong.”
But a cursory review shows more than a dozen stories about Stewart’s arrest, charge and eventual conviction have run in The Sun and its sister paper The Province in recent months, including front-page stories. It has been widely covered in other print and broadcast media.
Stewart, of course, has not shied away from his arrest or conviction. He said it shows he’s willing to stand up for his long-standing opposition to the Kinder Morgan project and his own campaign’s press releases have mentioned his arrest.
A front-page story in The Sun on March 24 detailed the arrests of Stewart and other protesters the day before outside Kinder Morgan’s tank farm in Burnaby. There have been other stories about the arrest since, including ones providing context and expert insight about the incident, then stories in the ensuing weeks and months about the appointment of a special prosecutor, an eventual criminal contempt charge, then Stewart’s guilty plea.
When Stewart launched his mayoral campaign in early May, just days before he entered his guilty plea, I wrote about the announcement. The column, which ran on the front page of The Sun, mentioned — in the first sentence — the candidate’s “impending possibility of a contempt-of-court charge.”
Young may have missed those stories, though. While she is typically quite friendly with reporters, she has also said in the past that she doesn’t read the paper. In 2015, when Young gained national media attention over controversial remarks she made during a speech at a Vancouver church, The Sun reported at the time Young had told church members she had stopped reading newspapers because “most of the facts in there are not facts.”