Vancouver’s fractured left cracks again
As another party joins the fray, we examine its limited chances for success
Over the decades, new civic parties have sometimes formed and tried to gain purchase in Vancouver’s thin political soil, hoping to outgrow the dominant parties. In the last half- century, all but one have failed.
Remember the Civic New Democrats? That was a one- term wonder created in the late 1980s to crack the ground under the leftist Committee of Progressive Electors, as it was then known. But the Civic NDP’s star candidate, David Levi, whose father Norm Levi was a heavyweight NDP MLA and cabinet minister, couldn’t pull it off.
How about VOICE, the Vancouver Organized Independent Civic Electors, a one- shot party created in the late 1990s by left- wing activist- lawyer Connie Fogal — the widow of the firebrand populist COPE councillor Harry Rankin — and Jonathan Baker, a onetime Non- Partisan Association councillor? Theirs was an attempt to sow what they thought was fertile ground between leftist COPE and the centreright NPA.
And the Greens? For more than 20 years, candidates — even anti- whaling pirate Paul Watson — tried periodically to get elected. Only former B. C. Greens leader Adriane Carr managed to do so in the 2011 election, and then only by 91 votes, unseating incumbent COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth for 10th spot.
Since the 1970s, there really have been only four political dynasties that have managed to gain office: The Electors Action Movement ( TEAM), NPA, COPE, and Vision Vancouver, which emerged in 2005 out of the fractured remnants of COPE’S civic government.
So last week’s announcement that yet another political party, OneCity, has emerged from the remnants of COPE to challenge it for the left vote was greeted with a degree of skepticism.
It is the second time a divided COPE — now called the Coalition of Progressive Electors — has spawned a new party. It imploded following its election to government in 2002. Mayor Larry Campbell, the late Jim Green and several others were unable to work with Coun. Tim Louis, an ardent leftist whose take- no- prisoners attitude caused constant arguments. Campbell and the others broke away to create the centre- left Vision Vancouver. Since then, under Gregor Robertson, Vision has moved more firmly toward the centre, forming deep relations with some developers and business leaders while pursuing ambitious green and social housing policies.
Last year Louis took over the remnants of COPE’S executive and more disaffected members resigned, including long- serving members David Chudnovsky, Al Blakey and Blair Redlin, along with R. J. Aquino, a young candidate in the last election. They formed OneCity, which they say is more inclusive and youth- based. Aquino is the only declared candidate, but the party is looking for a couple more.
But that may not count for enough in the Nov. 15 election.
“It is very, very rare for any new party to get into office,” said Gordon Price, the director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program.
“The party in power has to be very fractured for that to happen, and that’s only been the case a couple of times in Vancouver’s history.”
Price knows what he’s talking about. Under a strongly united NPA led by Gordon Campbell, Price won the 10th spot on council in the 1990 civic election. Levi trailed him by 800 votes. Price noted the NPA, the oldest civic party in Canada, is now a shadow of its former self. It fractured twice in recent years; once when mayor Philip Owen was messily deposed by then- councillor Jennifer Clarke, who then lost her mayoral bid, and then again when the party dumped mayor Sam Sullivan in favour of another councillor, Peter Ladner. He too lost his mayoral election.
But COPE’S own divisiveness is also what allowed Vision to form while in government, leading to the city’s newest dynasty.
“It seems that fracturing is a precondition to losing office,” Price said, adding he doesn’t believe the conditions exist for OneCity to make any in roads in the November civic election.
Patrick Smith, an SFU political science professor, put it another way. “The short answer is I don’t think it is going to matter. We have seen these kinds of parties start and falter.”
OneCity faces a landscape littered with small parties that hope to steal votes away from Vision. There are at least four parties on the left and four on the right.
OneCity has nonetheless won endorsements from two high- profile politicians, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies, an old COPE warhorse, and NDP MLA David Eby, who knocked off Premier Christy Clark in her riding of Vancouver- Point Grey.
On city council, Davies, her late husband Bruce Eriksen, and Rankin embodied all that COPE stood for: a social conscience, a defender of the poor and the homeless, and a tireless advocate for affordable housing. But in a recent interview, Davies had little time for her former civic party, saying it had lost its way and she doesn’t know if it will ever recover.
“COPE has changed a lot since I left. I don’t find it an easy organization to work with anymore,” she said. “I think that OneCity may be able to create a space for those people who are not part of Vision, and those who don’t want to be part of COPE.”
Louis dismissed OneCity, saying it will undermine his attempts to unify the left. “The creation of a fly- by- night, flash- in- the- pan party just adds to the alphabet soup and is not going to help in bringing about that unity,” he said.
“I would say there is a remarkable and growing level of discontent on the street for the current government, and this new little party can’t do anything about it.”
Aquino said there are a lot of people wanting OneCity to succeed. “It is not that we are coming out of nowhere. We’ve been active on the municipal scene, even with other movements,” he said. “We’ve been talking with a lot of people who are fed up with COPE, and who are fed up with Vision.”
Aquino said his party sees much of its growth coming from the 70 percent of people who don’t vote, many of whom he believes are turned off by the city’s fractious politics.