HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE
Robertson’s activism draws criticism, but he says it’s essential to job
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has always been active and vocal on issues that fall outside the purview of his office, but is that distracting him from his primary responsibilities?
It’s a little after 9 a.m. on a recent Friday and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is late.
Four public relations staffers from his office are waiting for him out of the rain inside a trendy Chinatown coffee shop. All arrived by car. He’s on his bike.
The third-term mayor is not a morning person, but that’s not why he’s late to Chinatown. His day started at home on a conference call with other Canadian mayors to plot their push for a national response to the opioid crisis.
Robertson takes flak for pursuing issues like this, and has been criticized for being an activist mayor who is concerned more about environmental and social issues than the day-to-day business of running a city.
When city crews failed to clear heavy snow and ice this winter, some residents hammered Robertson — who was on vacation during most of the storms — with accusations that he is an absentee mayor.
But Robertson defends his broad approach to governance, saying it is neither new nor unique.
And one need not dig deep to find examples of mayors who are wielding their influence to push senior governments to take action on various issues outside of their municipalities.
Seattle’s Ed Murray, New York City’s Bill de Blasio and Barcelona’s Ada Colau are among the prominent and sitting mayors stretching their activist wings. Closer to home, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi pressed Canada to boost its intake of refugees in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim ban.
Robertson views mayoral activism through a lens that reaches back hundreds of years.
“Many cities predate nations,” he says when he sits down for an interview.
“I think mayors have played important national and international roles historically in different times, depending on the geopolitics of the day.
“Certainly right now, there’s been a rise of activist mayors who are managing the biggest migration in human history into cities. National or provincial or state governments aren’t focused on supporting cities enough with this huge urbanization, so mayors are speaking out.”
By the time Robertson arrives in Chinatown — on a silver bicycle with an empty Happy Planet juice container tucked in its bottle holder — and trades his rain coat for a black suit jacket, he is past due at Chau Luen Tower. The home for low-income seniors is the first stop on a “community walk” through Chinatown.
It’s the third such walk Robertson has done, and his staff say the concept came from the mayor of Seattle, who tours neighbourhoods with police and city staff to spot and help solve problems like broken street lights or overgrown bushes. Robertson’s tour is more meet-and-greet than find-and-fix, and he is flanked only by members of his communications team (although 311 service staff normally come along).
Along the hour-and-a-half, prescheduled route, residents tell the mayor about serious problems like buildings in disrepair and the loss of cultural heritage to redevelopment. The mayor offers his ear, but no solutions. In fairness, the problems are complex and some exceed his mandate.
Many people Robertson encounters along the route recognize him.
“You are chairman in city hall!” exclaims one.
The mayor greets him with a smile and a hello. He shakes hands with others or shares a few words. Later in the day, he will stop for a lengthy chat with an artist selling carvings on East Hastings Street.
A pair of shopkeepers in Chinatown ask for photos with the mayor, but his staffers apologize and turn them down, telling them there’s a schedule they need to keep. Among the people who appear on that schedule is Kevin Huang, executive director of the Hua Foundation, a non-profit organization that represents Chinese-Canadian youth.
Huang tells Robertson about change in the neighbourhood, and points out “what’s at stake and what’s going to be lost” to redevelopment.
When asked if the city has been responsive to those concerns, Huang says he believes the city does not have the tools to figure out how to preserve or foster the social and cultural elements of the neighbourhood. When asked if he felt the mayor’s presence in Chinatown is worthwhile, he says: “Definitely.… For us, I think having Mayor Gregor Robertson down is, hopefully, painting a different perspective for him and staff.”
Robertson leaves Chinatown for city hall by bike around 11 a.m. for a closed-door meeting with Vancouver Public Library managers. Before he goes inside, he asks his staff to squeeze in a last-minute meeting later that afternoon. Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott has texted him to say she plans to tour Providence’s Crosstown Clinic, and Robertson wants to be there when she does.
Crosstown is the only clinic in North America to offer medicalgrade heroin to chronic users.
But there’s a snag. The mayor is due in Burnaby at that same time for the final meeting of the Metro mayors’ task force on homelessness — a key issue for Robertson, but one on which he has made little headway.
After a huddle, chief of staff Kevin Quinlan and city manager Sadhu Johnston agree to head to Burnaby, leaving Robertson to join the health minister.
When asked directly what he thinks his job is, Robertson says it is to keep people safe and make sure public works run smoothly. But he adds that “the city manager is responsible for implementing that” and for managing city workers.
“Fortunately, we have great city staff and a well-run city,” Robertson says. “That enables us to put more energy into the longer-term and big-picture changes to stay ahead of many other cities.”
It’s lunchtime and Shea O’Neil, the mayor’s executive assistant, ducks out to pick up food for Robertson. She never asks what he wants to eat, and on this day she brings back a tofu bowl from a local takeaway. It’s a vegan meal, as always, she says.
Inside Crosstown, Robertson and Philpott speak to care providers who say their waiting list for heroin treatment is hundreds of people long. Philpott expresses surprise when she hears a team within her ministry has been a barrier to the clinicians getting hold of enough diacetylmorphine.
“Those kind of things should not be barriers,” she says decisively. “Let me know specifically what it is that you need.”
When the conversation turns to the lack of space at the clinic, a subject closer to Robertson’s mandate, the mayor says: “Well, we can find buildings.” His offer hangs in the air.
This meeting is all about Philpott. The previous federal government opposed progressive drug treatment, and a visit from a receptive federal health minister is novel, long-awaited and encouraging.
Terry Lake, Philpott’s counterpart in Victoria, is not at the meeting. Lake’s staff later explain the minister “was not aware of a request” to join the tour.
Robertson’s relationship with the province is poor.
He is a former New Democratic Party MLA whose municipal party, Vision Vancouver, skews more green than it does conservative. Robertson and the B.C. Liberals rarely see eye-to-eye.
The mayor regularly chastises Victoria for not doing enough on an array of issues, such as housing and health. Last month, he supported and helped pass a Green party motion to request a judicial review of the province’s decision on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.
And he has pushed B.C. to expand the powers of the city through amendments to the Vancouver Charter to deal with empty homes and political financing.
Robertson would prefer to call the shots at the municipal level, and believes the province should grant cities more power.
“We’re entrenched as creatures of provincial legislation, and provinces have enormous power in Canada based on the constitution. Our model is so antiquated, it’s nuts,” he says, adding the province has been slow to make changes to the city’s charter.
“That inaction to empower cities holds us back.”
Singling out Stockholm and Copenhagen as examples, he said their close federal alignments helped them avoid problems of homelessness and addiction while keeping them green and economically resilient.
It’s a structure he thinks would work well in Canada — but that’s a distant battle.
Paddy Smith, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University, has a name for Canadian mayors like Robertson. He calls them “eager beavers.”
Characteristic behaviour of eager beavers is to push beyond the limits of their formal authority to get things done, according to a paper Smith co-wrote with Kennedy Stewart. Former Vancouver mayors Larry Campbell and Philip Owen were listed as local examples.
Eager beavers have one natural enemy, Smith says: provincial governments. When beavers try to take bites out of high-priority provincial interests, the two parties can butt heads.
It’s a theory that could help explain Robertson’s relationship with Victoria.
By 5 p.m., as the mayor’s staff begin to compare evening plans, Robertson meets with O’Neil to go over his evening schedule.
The mayor says he regularly works until 1 a.m. or later and gets around five hours of sleep.
He rarely drinks coffee, and city staff say he is always the last to leave the building.
Evidence does not support the opinion that Robertson is an absentee mayor.
By O’Neil’s count, Robertson spends an average of 79 hours in scheduled meetings every month. Those include council meetings, public hearings, conferences with Metro mayors, TransLink, the city manager and various department heads, the police board and assorted committees.
A look through his calendar shows that in the five weeks since Jan. 16, Robertson had seven days free of official business, and all of those days were on weekends.
But as compelling as that evidence is, it may not count for much in the eyes of the many residents who view things like garbage pickup and snow removal as the key responsibilities of a mayor.
Gerald Baier, an associate professor of political science at the University of B.C., echoes Robertson’s position that the city manager, who reports to all 11 people elected to council, is mostly responsible for that kind of work. But, as Baier says, “People inevitably point to the top.”
The most successful mayors are those who have been able to manage both service delivery and activism, he says.
“They pick their causes, but at the same time make sure that the city is running well.”
The city was not always running well this winter. Roads and sidewalks went uncleared and recycling piled up in alleys. And while Robertson is not directly responsible for all (or any) of those things, that may not matter.
“I would presume it will be an issue next election,” Baier says.
The Non-Partisan Association, he adds with a chuckle, will likely field a candidate who is willing to say: “Look, I commit to being here, and my causes are Vancouver’s causes.”
Mike Harcourt is a guy who knows about elections, having won quite a few of them. Asked for his take on Robertson’s record, the former Vancouver mayor and premier of this province turns straight to his activism and work ethic.
“I think he’s got a clear set of priorities, and you can agree with him or disagree with him. But there’s not a lot of ambiguity. He’s pretty clear on what he wants to accomplish,” he says, adding Robertson “works hard” and goes to a lot of events.
“I think he’s been elected, and re-elected twice more, because enough people feel he’s doing a pretty good job.”