What is Vision Vancouver?

The newest party has no public meetings and no announced platform

by Reed Eurchuk <reurchuk@republic-news.org>

With Mayor Larry Campbell about to retire, you would expect that a group dedicated to re-electing him, named for him, and partially run by him might also be about to disband. Think again. Like a snake, “Friends of Larry” has shed its skin and mutated into “Vision Vancouver.” Campbell’s departure seems only to have inflated the fantasies of his associates. Rather than attempting some amicable arrangement with their old party, these ex-“Friends” sought to force COPE into abject surrender. With big labour playing the enforcer, this shadowy group made an offer to COPE that they could not refuse. However, COPE did refuse.  

What is Vision Vancouver? No one knows yet. But we do know what they are not. They are not a political party in any generally accepted sense of the word. While the group of councilors around Mayor Larry Campbell has been speaking since last fall about setting out on their own, and they officially did leave the COPE caucus months back, they still have not held a public meeting, nor have they set out a platform. There is no organizational structure or democratic processes. And having left things to the last moment ensures that now there is not enough time to put any of these in place in any meaningful sense.

According to their putative Mayoral candidate, Jim Green, Vision Vancouver will run a full slate of candidates in the next election. If they do, they will be hand picked in a backroom somewhere, by a tiny group of people, themselves self-appointed officers of an instant political party. Even if they do stage-manage a charade of a party nomination meeting, there is no time to develop policy, to debate issues, to discuss alternatives, or to build a party. There is, in short, no time for the messiness democracy requires. Isn't that convenient?

Trojan-Horses—Take II

Vancouver District Labour Council has an assured seat on the COPE executive board. Bill Saunders has filled that seat. He has been away and in his absence, Ken Davidson, President of CUPE 1004, which represents city outside workers, has filled some of his duties there. Davidson told an audience that he “brokered the negotiations” recently between COPE and Vision Vancouver. Is it not a conflict of interest that Ken Davidson is also listed on the "Friends of Larry" web site as a supporter? As a supporter of the mothership that begat Vision Vancouver, one would expect that Davidson could hardly be a neutral broker. With “Friends” like these in positions of power it is not surprising COPE has found itself so fractured.

True to his ideology to the end, Larry Campbell voted against COPE and with his NPA colleagues and big business, falling on the sword for Wal-Mart. How can a political leader who represents himself as being on the “soft left” support a company who recently deserted a town in Quebec because the workers at its outlet there had unionized? Does Campbell not believe it is a human right for workers to organize? Do property rights trump human rights? In our society obviously they do. Just look at Wal-Mart in Quebec. Whichever side you agree with—the workers' side or Wal-Mart's side—you are subscribing to an ideology.

Why is it that whenever we're talking about someone else's politics, they're ideological, while our own politics are simply based on clear reasoning? What does Campbell mean when he says of himself, “We don't see ourselves locked into a box of ideology and revolution.” At a recent COPE meeting I attended one person warned of “engaging in old ideological battles.” When people impugn other's arguments as “ideological” they are engaging in ideology at a deeper level. They are belittling the idea's as outside acceptable opinion, or as Mayor Campbell recently said of Councilor Tim Louis's ideas, as an “embarrassment.” In this ideological move they suggest any normal, reasonable and practical person must see the obvious truth of their position. Only a bizarre person could imagine otherwise. Of course, Wal-Mart has the right to close a store in Quebec and that's not ideological, that's just the way things are.

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