METRO VOTERS OPT FOR RESET
SHAW: HORGAN MUST FIND MUNICIPAL ALLIES
The upheaval in Metro Vancouver municipal politics has left Premier John Horgan’s government with uncertain allies on its housing development plan, diminished influence in the City of Vancouver and a massive headache-in-waiting in what had been its power base in Surrey.
Horgan and his cabinet will be reaching out to new municipal leaders this week to try to gauge where they stand on key issues, namely Victoria’s aggressive push to build new housing and the consensus that had existed among metro mayors to expand SkyTrain on Vancouver’s Broadway line and build light rapid rail in Surrey.
“Really, what I saw in the election results is people are worried about affordability, housing and transportation,” Municipal Affairs Minister Selina Robinson said Sunday.
There are 16 new mayors in Metro Vancouver’s 21 municipalities. Of the 40 local politicians who sit on Metro Vancouver’s board, only 15 were re-elected.
And on the mayors’ council, where crucial regional transportation policy is set, 17 of its 23 members will have been replaced at the next meeting in November.
The new leadership represents mixed messages on housing.
A key election promise of the Horgan government was to build 114,000 units of new housing over 10 years to help increase supply and lower prices for those priced out of the market. But that’s required difficult conversations about increasing density by allowing the private sector to build new highrise condos, apartments and townhomes in traditionally low-density or single-family neighbourhoods across Metro Vancouver.
Saturday’s election results carried with them a cautious note from voters who clearly see a downside to the changing skyline.
Burnaby mayor-elect Mike Hurley campaigned on a moratorium on new developments, including highrise towers in Metrotown, that were displacing affordable low-rise rental apartments. In Port Moody, mayorelect Rob Vagramov called for more listening to the community and less working with developers. In White Rock, mayor-elect Darryl Walker expressed frustration at new highrise towers.
The sentiment is a conundrum for the Horgan administration. It needs the private sector to hit its housing targets — not everything can be low-income, low-rise, government-built social housing.
But voters appear fatigued at the proliferation of expensive condo towers. Robinson acknowledged the sentiment, but said the key is to focus on developments the communities will support.
Horgan has an ally in housing development with Vancouver mayor-elect Kennedy Stewart. Stewart wants to build 85,000 new homes over the next 10 years, including 25,000 new non-profit affordable rentals. The NDP would be happy to draft behind Stewart with the funding if he could clear a path to consensus on density and where to build without political blowback.
But Stewart doesn’t control the new Vancouver city council, which is made up of five NPA members, three Greens, Jean Swanson from COPE and Christine Boyle from OneCity.
The collapse of Gregor Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party greatly diminishes the clout the NDP government had in Vancouver. Horgan’s chief of staff Geoff Meggs was a founding member of Vision and Vision staff alumni populate the senior ranks in Victoria. Their influence has all but evaporated.
In a great bit of electoral irony, it is now the three Greens who control much of the balance of power on Vancouver council, similar to how the party controls the NDP’s fate provincially with its power-sharing agreement.
Green Leader Andrew Weaver will have more influence in Vancouver affairs than Horgan, a power dynamic that was flipped on its head overnight.
The B.C. NDP also faces a problem in Surrey, which was key to its electoral success in the 2017 provincial election. Former mayor Doug McCallum returned to power by promising to scrap LRT in favour of SkyTrain service and create a Surrey police force.
Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to head off any talk of backing away from LRT in Surrey last month with a high-profile joint news conference, where they reconfirmed a combined $3 billion in funding for Surrey LRT and a SkyTrain extension in Vancouver.
“We’re not scrapping the LRT,” Horgan said at the time, noting it was the “end of the discussion” on the issue.
Horgan now has to decide whether to hold that position.
In the NDP backrooms, the uncomfortable question will be: How many NDP voters from 2017 aligned with McCallum on Saturday? If Surrey is crucial to the NDP’s provincial success, what is the political cost to the Horgan administration in fighting with McCallum and opposing the more than 45,484 voters who backed him?
Already there are signs in Victoria the strategy will simply be to buy time. Robinson called it “hypothetical” on if the government is willing to talk about replacing LRT with SkyTrain. The NDP is hoping it won’t have to take a position until — and if — McCallum can get a resolution to change the transit plan through the mayors’ council.
At that council table, Horgan can no longer rely on Burnaby’s Derek Corrigan to backstop his LRT plans either with Corrigan’s defeat Saturday.