Year: 2013

To the Victor goes the Landmines…

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 3 Comments.

I am writing this before the polls close, so read this as a warning to the winning party, whomever they will be

Ah, screw it. I’m a local blogger, not the traditional media, I don’t have to pussy foot around pretending there is a real exciting race here and can just say it – we all know the NDP are going to win this election with a comfortable majority of more than 55 seats. So this is a warning not to the NDP (they know what they are in for) but to NDP supporters and the centrist voter who this one time just couldn’t put Christy Clark’s name down.

The next two years are going to suck.

It will not be the fault of Adrian Dix, it will be because of the vast minefield of trouble left behind by Christy Clark’s two years of campaigning in lieu of governing. Every step Dix and his team make in the next couple of years will be in the context of this minefield. The best case scenario is that they can get a handle on these issues and get past them in a meaningful way before the next election, because if he governs responsibly, the next two years are going to look terrible on paper.

So I present to you, in extremely short form (each of these affords its own long blog post): the landmines left behind by Christy Clark, all of which will likely explode in the next 5 years:

Pipelines: Assuming the NDP win, we will witness a monumental battle between the Federal Government and BC regarding the NGP. This fight serves the Conservatives well, as they will be seen by their base as champions battling the true enemies of Conservatism: an unholy axis of Socialist Hordes, First Nations, and Dirty Hippies. The Kinder Morgan line twinning will be no less ugly, even if the playing field will be less obvious. Closer to home, the proposal sail Panamax tankers full of jet fuel up the South Arm of the Fraser, offload in Richmond and pipe it to the Airport is stuck in EA limbo, as Minister Terry Lake cynically delayed the signing of the EA Certificate just two months before the election (no coincidence that the project had vocal public disapproval, and ran through several key Liberal ridings). All of these fights are going to be ugly, and there will be a lot of private money spent criticizing any government that opposes pipelines to the Pacific.

BC Hydro: The legacy of run-of-the-river small hydro projects has been well explored, but they are just a symptom of the monumental mismanagement of BC Hydro by this government. From signing terrible long-term contracts to buy power for much more than its re-sale value to deferring debts to some future date, to blithely ignoring the recommendations of the BC Utility Commission and the partial-privatization experiment – the Liberals have put BC Hydro on very shaky financial ground. The Cash Cow has been milked for billions in the last few years, and will soon be coming up dry. It will be increasingly difficult for the next government to hide the bleeding, especially as we try to provide power to new resource industries. Much like TransLink (below) and BC Ferries (below), this is not a criticism of BC Hydro as a Crown Corporation, but of political fettering in the business by the Premier and Darth Coleman which has limited Hydro’s ability to fulfill its mandate.

AirCare: The BC Liberals made an announcement last year that they were going to end AirCare and replace it with… uh… something. This, despite two recent external program reviews that showed AirCare to be not only an effective regional air quality protection system, but also one of the most cost-effective greenhouse gas reduction measures in the Province. It works, and it will continue to work for years to come. The Liberals, as per their habit, announced the end, but didn’t actually do anything about it– the Provincial legislation requiring TransLink to run AirCare is still on the books, so the NDP will either have to pass legislation to end it in 2014, or sign a new contract with the provider to continue it- no doubt facing Liberal criticism either way.

Water Act: Interesting fact: BC is the only jurisdiction in North America with no laws protecting groundwater resources. Anyone can drill a hole in their back yard and extract as much groundwater as they want, even if it draws the neighbour’s wells (or adjacent surface streams) dry. Recognizing this problem a decade ago, the BC Government started working on an update to the century-old Water Act. Then promptly threw it on the back burner to simmer – a limbo it has been in for several years. The failure to move this file forward one inch will be Terry Lake’s legacy as Minister of Environment  One might suspect they got push-back for attempting to download groundwater protection to municipalities (see the paucity of Water Management Plans completed in 5 years), or perhaps it is the vast quantity of water needed to fuel the fracking dreams of the Oil and Gas Industry and proposed coal mine expansions in the Rocky Mountain Trench. For whatever reason, every year without an effective Water Act means less water security for our future.

Translink: I don’t know what more to say about TransLink than they need to be given the resources to build the system back to where it was 2 years ago (yes, we actually have less bus service now than when Christy Clark took over a Premier), then we need to get the governance worked out so stupid money-losing projects like the Falcon Gates and expanding the Pattullo are forgotten, and we can start laying groundwork for real Transit expansion to UBC and (not “or“) South of the Fraser. Again: poor financial management and a lack of leadership on this front mean just fixing what has been broken will cost a lot of money and take some political will. Minister of Transportation is going to be a key (if thankless) portfolio.

Gateway: We can also expect the Minister of Transportation to suffer when the bills come due on the asphalt-laying decade of the BC Liberals. Neither the Golden Ears Bridge nor the Port Mann are meeting the fanciful traffic projections that would be needed to make the Tolls pay for the works. The SFPR will no doubt be over budget and unsatisfying as it pushes traffic back-ups around (as opposed to removing them). Some money will need to be found for the Tunnel and Pattullo refits (not “replacements“). Yes, the latter is TransLink, but their larder is bare, and the Minister can’t let a bridge fall down on their watch. Ugh. What a mess.

BC Ferries: Yet another case of a Crown Corporation not being run at arms-length, being partially sold off to profit-taking buddies, starved of revenue, then being the victim of a lack of decision-making at a crucial time. The current government wants Ferries to be self-supporting (a litmus test not applied to any other transportation system in the Province, from roads to sidewalks to bike paths to transit) while increasing rates to the point where Float Planes and Helijets are threatening to become the affordable alternative. Much like other aspects of the Province’s Transportation “Strategy”, they are worried more about moving cars than people (try to get from Vancouver to Saltspring on transit or from Victoria to Vancouver on bike- and you will see what I mean). Contracts are coming up, ships are aging and the system is failing. Something is going to have to happen soon.

Oh, I could go on – the unaccountable fiasco that is PavCo and the new BC Place Roof, the Pacific Carbon Trust, the ignored carbon emission targets, faltering timber supply for the few non-exploded lumber mills left up north, the Teacher’s contract, School seismic upgrades, Hospital upgrades, fixing the Ambulance Service, Regional Policing models, Waste-to-Energy plants…

As much as I hope Adrian Dix wins, I wouldn’t wish his job on my worst enemy.

Time to Vote!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

I am someone who follows politics, gets involved in the process, likes to encourage others to get involved, is free with his opinions, yadda yadda. So you would think that I would be all excited with a tightening electoral race heading towards the polls next week. You would be wrong.

Sorry to all involved, everyone trying to get me to be more excited, but this election has been kind of a snoozer.

I was chatting to a few folks about this very topic on the weekend, and there were various excuses. Most seem to suggest we are fatigued – the election has been running for 2 years, the last 21 days have seen nothing more than an increase in volume and road signage compared to the last year. The Liberal’s (mostly through proxy) systematic application of fear and suspicion are turning people off, while the NDP have taken such a passive approach that they are not generating enough interest to offset the resultant cynicism.

Meanwhile the Greens are making serious inroads on Vancouver Island (but are silent elsewhere) and the Conservatives appear to be completely lost in the woods. The strongest cases I have heard this election are for electing independents in the hope we can fix the entire broken system.

I dutifully attended two of the three traditional all-candidates events, and I helped organize another one. Turnout for most was lower than in previous elections, which immediately calls me to question my earlier prediction that turnout would be up this year (people are more likely to line up to vote against something than they spend a lot of effort voting for something). I also have met all of the candidates in the local election. I have contributed to the process by donating my own money to the campaign. In the last 6 months, I have had lengthy sit-down discussions with three of the candidates, where we discussed a variety of issues.

From this, I have ascertained we have several truly dedicated, determined, and eager candidates, each who would serve out community well in Victoria, if given the chance.

But I only get to vote for one.

I mentioned earlier that my sincerest hope is that the local campaign is an open, honest, and positive one. From what I have seen, it has been. The only truly distasteful moment I experienced in this election was when I had a chance encounter with a person who claimed to be peripherally associated with one of the candidates and immediately gave me a bunch of “background juice” about the candidate that was highly personal. I don’t think this person knew I was a local blogger, and it was not in the context of any political event, so I’m not sure why I was chosen for a confessional. I had no reason to believe or not believe the person, and I don’t think that person’s gripes were valuable fodder for anyone. It was just weird, and hasn’t changed my opinion of the candidate or the campaign. I shared it only with a few people close to me and/or the candidate to see if I was missing something. Consensus opinion was that it was silly. So I didn’t let it bother me, and I won’t write about it here.

So in the spirit of open, honest and constructive discussion, I am going to give my impressions of the local candidates, and try my hardest to accentuate the positive. If you want to know who I am voting for, you might parse it from this, or you might drive by my house and see the sign on my lawn. Alphabetically (by first name, since we are all friends here!):

Hector Bremner: Hector has hit the City with a force. He is simply the best candidate the Liberals could have offered us this election. He is young, articulate, dedicated, and has one hell of a ground game going. His volunteer army has been ubiquitous (if somewhat anonymous), his twitter and other social media presence daunting (if not always topical), and his message strongly pointed (if not always clear). Overall, I think he is running a great campaign.

The one big thing Hector and I disagree about is the team he is representing. I have made it no secret I don’t like the Premier, and I do not have faith in her abilities as leader. Hector clearly respects her skills, and is proud to represent her. However, his campaign has been an interesting walk along a thin line: he has spoken about representing New West in Victoria, not the other way around, and has coined the phrase “this election isn’t about Change- it is about the Future”, while still saying his team is the best one to lead the Province. Not quite running as an independent, but not quite toeing the party line. It has been an interesting balancing act and he has been very effective at it.

After chatting with him recently, he is also convinced he is going to win, against the odds, the polls, and the assumed wisdom about New Westminster as an NDP stronghold. He also made it clear he was putting all his energy into this one shot – at the QPRA meeting he mentioned he was “not going to run in another jurisdiction or level of office”– this is the job he wants, and he is working hard to get it. I’m not sure he is going to be able to pull it off.

James Crosty: I was really happy to hear James was running, only because I hoped he would add some “spark” to the campaign in general. I’ve said it before: I don’t always agree with James, but I know for certain James always agrees with James. By that, I mean he is painfully honest about what is on his mind, his heart is in the right place, and he is always willing to stick his neck out and roll up his sleeves to see his vision realized. He brought a fresh perspective to the all-candidates events, full of his usual bluster, yet somewhat more positive and contemplative than he was during his Mayoral Run of 2011 (and therefore more likable). I also liked his honesty at the QPRA meeting (and I paraphrase): “[If I don’t win] You bet I am going to run again, for another level of government- because when you want to contribute to the community as much as I do, you can’t help but step up at every opportunity!”

This was in reply to Hector’s earlier discussion of his single-minded determination to get this specific job, but it told us what we all needed to know- James is healthy, happy, and as determined as ever to make change in this City. And I love him for it. I’m just afraid he ran an Independent campaign in a year when two other candidates were leaning more on their independent side than their Parties – that is a hard niche for three to fit into.

Judy Darcy: Despite my best efforts to remain jaded about the NDP nomination process, after two years of interacting with Judy Darcy, I really like her. She has an authentic spirit about her that makes you want to chat with her, and shows a keen ear when you bring her ideas. She is the first to admit when she doesn’t have an answer, but can draw on a lifetime of experience dealing with government and legislative issues. She also puts out a genuine sense that she is empathetic for others. In this campaign she was the one saying government can (and must be) an effective and positive force in our society if we are to have a fair and just society.

I think she could have done a better job taking her one perceived weakness – the feeling that she’s not “from here” (of course neither are Hector, or Terry, or James… or me for that matter) – and turned it around. She might have said that despite her only being out west for a decade, she has spent her entire life fighting for the issues that are important to people in New Westminster- We have RCH, and she has been fighting for hospital workers; we have an aging population, and she has been an advocate for seniors; we are a town with a large labour-class and she has been fighting labour issues her entire life; we have a huge population of immigrants and people in lower-cost rental housing, and she is a first-generation Canadian who has been fighting to improve conditions for low-income people. But maybe that would have been giving too much credence to the criticism in a town full of immigrants from other parts of Canada, and other parts of the world.

Her campaign was instead like that of Adrian Dix, the campaign you run as someone safely in the lead: relatively low key and positive, with a strong personal connection. She has worked hard since gaining the nomination to reach out to people across the community, and it is a good thing, because she is a candidate who is way better in person than she is on paper.

Lewis Dahlby: I have not seen or heard a peep out of Lewis this election. I did not attend the one all-candidates event he chose to attend (and where he apparently decided it was OK to commit a Godwin in polite discussion).

I have, however, once met Lewis Dahlby. I recognized him as the guy who accosted me at Sapperton day a couple of years ago. I was manning the NWEP booth having great conversations with people about transportation issues, and he spent an hour bending my ear about what was wrong with “you people” and how Government had to get out of the job of building roads and bridges. In the end, we agreed to disagree shortly after I suggested to him that if really wanted to live in a country with no interference from Government, he might want to give Somalia a try.

Paul Forseth: Paul’s campaign here in New West was symptomatic of the entire provincial Conservative campaign. It was rather lack-lustre and held more promise at the start than real punch in the end. I appreciate the service Paul has provided in the community, from his time working in the corrections, family law and parole systems, to his dozen years serving the community as an MP. However, it is clear to anyone reading my blog that I don’t share his Conservative opinions, so he probably wasn’t trying to appeal to me and my ilk.

Still, I don’t think his campaign lit any fires, and I didn’t hear him offering the electorate much. He spoke of “Conservative Values” having a history of providing better governance, but never really clarified what he meant by those words, nor did he cite examples from the modern world where “conservative” countries were outperforming “non-conservative” countries. When he shone, it was when speaking of his personal experiences growing up in New Westminster and providing services to constituents as an MP. He also rarely mentioned his Party, while at the same time he never differentiated himself from the other “Independents” running in this election in New West.

Terry Teather: To me, Terry’s finest moment was the “Stump Speech” he gave, while standing on an actual stump, during the All Candidate’s Jane’s Walk. He got very impassioned about what Green Principles are, and why they are the best direction forward for the Province, and indeed the world. He came into this election a virtual unknown in New West, but explained his motivation being to encourage the youth that he teaches in his day job to take an active role in politics- to learn and care about how Government works.

Being a virtual unknown prior to this election, I doubt he will reach the level of support that the Greens received in New Westminster during the last Provincial election, as those numbers saw a “bump” due to well-known local activist Matt Laird being on the ballot. However, Terry’s presence on the campaign was a positive one, and I hope he has the time and energy to stay involved in the local environmental scene after May. I was really happy to have met Terry during the campaign, he seems like a straight-up nice guy with a passion for improving community. We need him on the NWEP.

Now go vote. Advanced polls are open May 8-11, every day, and May 14th is the big day. I voted this evening at the Lawn Bowling Club, and it took less than 5 minutes. Go!

Abandoned Gas Stations – Part 2

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

In an earlier post, I talked about why there are so many empty lots that used to be gas stations on apparently valuable urban lots. The short version: the structure of the Provincial Contaminated Sites Regulation allows it, there is little municipalities can do about it, and the business interests of a risk-adverse landowner often encourage it.

Typical White Pipe Farm. 

For Part 2, I want to talk about what can be done about it. Short version: not much, unless we can find some political will and community pressure to bring these fallow lands back into (economic) production. If those arrive, there are three potential strategies that are worth exploring.

Change the Regulations.
The Contaminated Sites Regulation is not perfect, and bureaucrats in the Land Remediation Section of the Ministry of Environment would be the first to acknowledge that. It is a complex piece of regulation, first developed (believe it or not) to provide standards for the remediation of the old Expo86 site. The regulation came to force in 1996, and has been constantly evolving, both to increase protection of human health and the environment, and to make for a more efficient application of the regulations.

I already mentioned two issues that lead to empty former gas stations: the inability to “sell the liability” along with the contaminated land, and the lack of a requirement to clean up a contaminated site in a timely manner. Both of these could be changed tomorrow (well, after the election I suppose) with a signature from the Minister, but both would have unintended consequences that are probably best avoided.

The first is obvious. Separating the liability for contamination from the person responsible for it violates one of the fundamental principles of modern environmental legislation: the “polluter pays” principle. With no threat of being held responsible for contaminating lands, there is little incentive for property owners to take preventative action to avoid polluting it. After several years of irresponsible land management, the owner could effectively avoid cleaning up by selling the land (and the liability) to a numbered company on the Caymans, who will dissolve the day after, leaving no-one owning the land. Abandoned sites like this ultimately become the property (and responsibility) of the Province, and they have better things to do with your money than running around cleaning up other people’s contamination.

As for the second, there already is a provision in the EMA to “order” a property owner to clean up their site, but in the wording of the Act there has to be a compelling reason for the Director to do this. In essence, the government isn’t all that interested in marching onto your land and telling you what to do with it- unless it is causing other people environmental problems. If there is a human health or environmental risk identified on your site, the Ministry can order you to remedy it. If your property is just sitting fallow, it is way outside of the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment to force you to make it productive.

Use Municipal Powers.
The problem here is that Municipalities actually have very limited powers under the Local Government Act. Forcing someone to clean up a contaminated site is not one of those powers. However, Cities can make decisions and Bylaws regarding land use, and they can charge property taxes.

In theory (and at this point, I need to make it really clear that I am a geoscientist, not a lawyer!) a Municipality could, through an amendment to the OCP, create a property class relating to gas stations and other potentially-contaminating businesses (we don’t do coal gasification much anymore, but drycleaners, metal galvanizers, and a few other industries are culprits that were historically as bad as gas stations, if not as plentiful). They could then apply a special property tax Bylaw on these properties if they are decommissioned. Note, they would probably lose in court if they tried to apply it only to the property at the corner of XXX and YYY, but if they made a broad enough category that applied to a type of landuse as opposed to a single lot, it would probably stick.

The goal here is not to be punitive (no elected official wants to be called Anti-Business), but to subtly change the business case so the “do nothing” option was no longer the most logical one for the property owner. The City could reinforce this by giving a 5-year exception from the extra tax (which should give adequate time for any investigation and remediation to a motivated landowner) if the company develops a Remedial Action Plan accepted by the Ministry of Environment, and sticks to the timelines of that plan. Or the City could keep the extra taxes in trust instead of adding them to revenue, and allow the property owner to apply them to the cost of remediation once the site is cleaned up. The cost to the City of either of these actions would, in the long run, be returned to the City in the increased land value created.

The upside of this would be incentive given to the property owner to make the site whole, while the City sees a piece of land put back into tax-generating productivity much sooner. The downside is that the owners of contaminated sites are likely to view this as a “tax-grab”, and it may significantly dis-incentivise the renewal of old buildings. Remember from Part 1, this whole process started when a property owner applied for a Permit to demolish, rezone, or develop a piece of land. If that permit application never happens, a capital-letter Contaminated Site is never identified. The only thing potentially worse for an urban area than weed-filled white pipe farms is the same number of derelict buildings where owners are afraid to knock them down.

Think outside the box
There may be other, more creative solutions to this problem that don’t actually involve cleaning the sites up. It has proven possible to actually use those vacant lots and make them part of the living neighbourhood without replacing the buildings.

The most commonly cited example of this is the Davie Village Community Garden. You have probably walked by this site at Davie and Burrard in Vancouver, one of the busiest intersections on the Downtown Peninsula. This used to be a gas station, and there were some significant challenges related to the remediation of the site.

Image Source: http://www.cityfarmer.info

Sometime in 2008-2009, the developer of the site, prompted by community groups and with the assistance of the City, agreed to allow a Community Garden to be developed on a large portion of the site. The incentive to the Developer was significant property tax relief afforded by the City (by allowing the land to be classed as non-profit/ recreational instead of commercial), and an agreement that the Garden use would be temporary with a set closing date, so that their ability to develop will not be restricted once they get all their development ducks in a row.

Another hurdle was the “contaminated site” issue- not the first location you think of when you want to plant a garden! So an environmental consultant was brought in to test the soil and vapours, and assure that the residual contaminants were not going to enter the food chain at the surface, or impact the health of people using the garden space. One advantage of this site was that the contamination was not “high risk”, in that its concentration was low, and the contamination is far enough down that even the deepest-rooting vegetables were going to remain several metres away from it.

Image Source: http://blog.wwf.ca/blog/

Finally, there are some legal liability issues that the property owner would need to address- no property owner wants to be exposed to nuisance claims for everyone who stubs a toe or trips on a rake on their land, so liability insurance has to be part of the business plan for the property owner.

This is not a solution that works everywhere, but it does work surprisingly well in many locations. There is a not-for-profit organization based in Vancouver called SOLEfood Farms who are doing urban farming on numerous fallow sites, moving along as land becomes available, or is lost to eventual re-development. They have managed to string together people who have traditional work barriers, people who have little access to land or fresh food, and businesses that are looking to build community as part of their business plans. I can’t say enough good things about the success these folks have generated – you need to go there and give them a virtual high-five.

However, even if the Community Garden is not perfect for every site, there is potential at many sites to simply take down the Blue Rental Fence of Neglect and open the space, even temporarily, for parks or amenity use. In some spots, that might mean a few benches, some planters, maybe a grassy mound for picnics. In others, this may be a basketball court or bocce green, even a temporary art installation. These spots can be ideal “pocket parks” that cost the taxpayers very little while adding a bit of green, human space to busy urban areas, adding to the value of the adjacent properties instead of reducing it.

Image source: http://sourcethestation.com/idea/pocket-park/
Image source: http://www.nybits.com/photos/1510-lex-pocket-park.html
Image Source: http://www.openideo.com/

How to make this happen? The Ministry has to agree that the proposed site use is safe. The Municipality needs to provide an incentive to the property owner, and reduced or deferred taxes is the best incentive they have. The property owner has to be reassured that this use will not cause them risk, or ultimately scuttle their plans for the site. It seems a dedicated community volunteer group to bring the partners together and shepherd the site has been the catalyst in the past. Maybe your favourite site just needs that catalyst.

Jane’s Walk Weekend comes to New West!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Hopefully, after a couple of news stories in the local papers and Mary Wilson’s dynamic talk at the recent New Westminster Pecha Kucha event, you are aware that there will be a series of Jane’s Walks in New Westminster this weekend.

(parts below cribbed from a press release I helped pen – so sorry for the quasi-self-plagiarizing!)

Jane’s Walks are becoming a global event, held in hundreds of cities around the world on the first weekend in May. Around the world, neighbourhood groups organize free community walks to honour the memory of Jane Jacobs.

Jane Jacobs is considered by many to be the Mother of modern Urbanism, in that she brought it to life, loved and supported it, and worked tirelessly to give it all the tools it needed to prosper. She rose to prominence for her activism to protect Greenwich Village from the Lower Manhattan Expressway proposal, and her ground-breaking book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. She moved to Toronto during the Vietnam War, and brought her Urban Activism with her, such that she received first Citizenship, then the Order of Canada. To put a local angle on her story, Jacobs is sometimes referred to as “the mother of Vancouverism” for the influence her writings and research had on the development of post-freeway Vancouver, and the belief that density can be done without compromising liveability.

Jane’s Walks are meant to honour Jane, but also to honour her desire: that cities and urban areas become safe, diverse, and interesting places for people to live, work, and play. We honour this by drawing urban neighbours together to take a walk through their own city, not to get from A to B, but to have a “walking conversation”, meet neighbours, learn something new about their own backyard, and ultimately increase citizens’ connection to their urban home.

It just so happens that this year, Jane’s Walk came on the perfect weekend for a burgeoning New Westminster election tradition: Tenth to the Fraser, NEXT NewWest, and the New Westminster Environmental Partners working together to organize a unique event to bring voters and candidates together. Instead of another boring debate or staged Q&A, the “All Candidate’s Jane’s Walk” will be an inviting, social, and fun event. The goal is to give everyone a chance to meet, greet and get to know the candidates seeking your vote on May 14th.

All New Westminster residents are invited to gather at Sapperton Park (at the corner of East Columbia Street and Sherbrooke Street) at 5:30pm (sharp!). The five candidates will be introduced, and the group will walk along Columbia Street and the Central Valley Greenway to Downtown New Westminster and the River Market (a distance of about 3.5 km, so about an hour walking at a leisurely pace).

Along the way, each of the candidates will be given an opportunity for their 3-4 minutes “on the soapbox” to address the crowd. We promise to keep the speeches short, as the emphasis will be on face-to-face and small group conversations during the walk. Participants will be encouraged to chat with the candidates and ask their own questions. At the end of the walk, participants and candidates will be encouraged to gather at the Paddlewheeler Pub to continue the conversation, socialize and network (in the NEXT NewWest tradition). A rough schedule is available on the Jane’s Walk Event page– so if you can only catch part of the walk, you are, of course, welcome to join or leave! Don’t forget to bring Skytrain fare to get from the end back to the beginning- both ends are close to Millennium Line stations!

Now that the self-serving advertizing part of the post is over, I want to encourage you to go to the Jane’s Walk New Westminster page and see what other walks are coming your way this weekend. There are no less than 10 walks planned, most of them an hour or two long. I love looking at the Jane’s Walks GoogleMap plug-in to see that New Westminster is one of the two centres of Jane’s Walks for BC along with some young upstart village to the west…

I like to think this is because we have a beautiful, walkable City, and engaged citizens who are proud of their neighbourhoods and want to create community connections. It may also be because we have Mary Wilson leading the charge to make us a walking city. No matter if you live on the West Side, Queensborough, Downtown or the Brow – there is a walk in your neighbourhood.

The weather forecast is spectacular this weekend– sunscreen and water bottles are about the only thing you will need for any of the walks, and many of them terminate near places where one can buy ice cream or icy cold beer, as per your preference. So get out of your house, drag the kids away from the screen, leave the car in the garage, and meet a few neighbours. We’ll see you on the Streets of New Westminster this weekend!

My Nominee for the Worst Road in BC

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 9 Comments.

MORE UPDATES BELOW (May 22)

Every year, BC’s Car Nobbling Council the BC Automobile Association has a little campaign to shame municipalities into giving more money to the BC Road Builders. This “news” is dutifully lapped up by the popular media, and many fingers are wagged at Cities for not maintaining their infrastructure.

It is good media, good advertising for the BCAA, and after the rush of the contest cools down, AM radio goes back to complaining about high taxes and the evils of socialism. No-one ever mentions that roads are, de facto, a socialist enterprise. Government pooling money from taxpayers and spending it building something for the common good – roads are the very model of socialism. But I digress.

This year, I want to nominate a candidate. There is one route that I have been lamenting for a few years, and it never seems to get the attention it needs. It is 9 kilometres of undulating, root-cracked, potholed, uneven, poorly marked, inconsistent, horribly maintained, and (IMHO) unsafe pavement connecting the New Westminster Quayside boardwalk to Burnaby’s Central Park. It sees a lot of traffic, provides an important arterial corridor connecting numerous other routes, and it has seen little more than a few asphalt patches in 27 years.

Yes, I am talking about the BC Parkway, or to give credit to sponsors from 27 years ago, the combined “John Molson Way” walking path and “7-Eleven Bike Route”.

Let me take you back to the heady days of Expo86. The theme was “World in Motion” and transportation was central to most exhibits. When the SkyTrain was built out to New Westminster to bring Vancouver into the 70’s, transportation-wise, the entire line was paralleled by the BC Parkway. I’m not sure why Molson decided to sponsor a walking path, but for a decade around that time 7-Eleven sponsored a major international cycling team. In fact, the only Canadians to ever wear the Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France did it for Team 7-Eleven: Alex Stieda in 1986 and Steve Bauer in 1990. (Bauer also wore yellow in 1988, riding for Weinmann – La Suisse the year Greg Lemond was busy being shot, but I’m geeking out now). At the time, they also provided me countless post-ride Slurpees. No-one has to convince me of 7-Eleven’s credibility when it comes to support for cycling.

The BC Parkway represented Greater Vancouver’s first multi-community-connecting active transport route – our first “Greenway” that didn’t wrap around Stanley Park – but time has not been good to it.

In the intervening 27 years, the BC Parkway through Burnaby and New Westminster has seen a lot of development. Metrotown, Edmonds, Downtown New Westminster and the Quayside have all blown up since 1986. With all the change, some connections on the BC Parkway have been improved, some have been severed. The pavement has degraded, the crossings have become hazardous, the sight lines destroyed and the route chopped up. The asphalt in place is so bad that tree roots have pushed right through- and are being eroded by bike tires! What other road in the province features tree roots being held back by tires? This is a shameful state for our region’s first real integrated municipality-spanning Greenway!

So, please, I implore you – go to the BCAA website and vote for “BC Parkway, Vancouver ” for being “Unsafe for Cyclists and Pedestrians“. You cannot select it with the map, but enter “BC Parkway” in the search, and if it doesn’t find it, choose the highlighted “following form” text to the left. It takes 30 seconds to use the pull-down menus, and if we enter it enough, they may need to acknowledge us. They have acknowledged us! We are now in the top 10 list of worst roads, so you can enter “BC Parkway” in the search and vote with one push of the button! Tell your friends, tell your neighbours, tell your mom, tell cyclists you see rattling their teeth or getting lost on the BC Parkway, tell pedestrians tired of being treated like pylons on the BC Parkway! If you only vote once this month, do it at the BCAA website!

May 22 UPDATE: You can now Choose “BC Parkway Burnaby” or “BC Parkway Vancouver” – and at this point, I don’t care which you choose, as they are both in the Top 10! All the pictures below are form the Burnaby and New Westminster portion, but applies as well to much of the Vancouver portion. Oh, and the BCAA has subtley changed their marketing around this, to make it apparent that they are OK with a bikeway winning! So get one more vote in – only 3 days to go!

In case you need more convincing, here are some highlights of my tour yesterday from Central Park to New Westminster along the Parkway:

The new parts through Central Park are actually quite pleasant!
First problem at Patterson Station. No traffic controls. Do I dodge pedestrians
on the narrow sidewalk / bus stop / newspaper kiosk, or do I go against
 the Do Not Enter sign through the bus lane? 
Sometimes I’m separated from the sidewalk, sometimes not. What is
a pedestrian to think? 
I guess I could go through the bollards onto the narrow sidewalk to avoid
the pedestrians, but there are signs and bus stops. 
Completely nonsensical intersection, no bicycle controls at all,
high pedestrian traffic, blind approaches. Alas, I dismount.
Hard to get contrast, but this root lump is better than a foot high. 
Yes, tree roots. Yes, they are exposed, and the bark rubbed
off of them by wheels and feet. They have been exposed that long.
Suspension at work. 
Bad pavement, blind intersections, forced to go to the sidewalk,
and unclear way-finding. This picture is the full BC Parkway experience.  
I hope it is legal to ride a bike on the sidewalk in Burnaby, because the
Parkway has completely disappeared.  
Oh! There it is, a few hundred feet down the road. 
I like surfing as much as the next guy, but prefer my waves more watery.
Regular way-finding signs remind you where now-destroyed portions
of the BC Parkway used to be. Memories of EXPO86. 
Interesting fact: much of the Parkway follows the old BC Inter-Urban
electric rail bed. No point removing the tracks, I guess.  
More crumbling pavement…
…and another terrible blind crossing with no accommodation
for bicycles, high traffic, and few options!
Speaking of options, the way-making sign to the right has no
relation whatsoever to the multiple junctions within view. 
There is a sign, there must a Parkway around here somewhere. 
There are my bollards! All I have to do is cross 20th street
with no traffic light, no crosswalk, and terrible visibility. 
This is where the trail takes me in New West – to a narrow sidewalk on the wrong side
of 6th Ave., with no access to the rest of the parkway for several kilometres. 
Insider tip – the Parkway continues on the south side of Stewardson, you just
need to cross the Queensborough Bridge. Please dismount. 
See? Queensborough bridge makes the obvious connection!
(I ranted two years ago about this little way-making fiasco) 
Unfortunately, the trail over here does not have better pavement…
…or safer crossings.
Our journey ends at Stewardson and Third Ave- where you can choose two roads
with no cycling infrastructure, or an overpass to some unknown place,
there being no way- finding around here. Thanks for joining me! Now go vote! 

What’s with abandoned Gas Stations? Part 1

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 11 Comments.

One of the things I do in my professional life is deal with contaminated sites.

In the same way that whenever I tell anyone I am geologist they ask me about when the next earthquake is going to happen (short answer: I have no idea), when people find out I work with contamination, they always ask about old gas stations. Why are there all these old gas station lots with nothing on them but weeds and white pipes? Or more commonly: what is going on with the old gas station at the corner of XXX and YYY?

All of the images in this post are straight screen captures from GoogleMaps.
I spent 5 minutes scrolling around local communities looking for examples of
White Pipe Farms. I presume they are all former gas stations, but I do not actually
 know the history of most of the sites I found just by surfing. Nothing I say below
should be specifically related to the sites I took images of – every site has it’s
own history, and every owner has their own motivations.

It is a long story, and regular readers know how much I love long stories.

In British Columbia, there are two pieces of related legislation – the Environmental Management Act and the Contaminated Sites Regulation – that control how contaminated land in the Province is managed. Municipalities have very limited powers over contaminated lands, unless of course they own the lands. It is the form of the EMA and CSR that cause these valuable urban commercial lots to sit empty for years.

A contaminated site becomes a capital-letter Contaminated Site when the owner of the property applies to the City for one of 5 specific permits named in Section 40 of the EMA: Subdivison, Rezoning, Development, Demolition or Soil Removal. The City is required by the EMA to collect certain information from the owner and send that off to the Ministry of Environment prior to issuing a permit. This makes sense, when you think about it. Those 5 permit types will change the character of the site – evidence of past property uses disappear when one of those 5 permits are issued. The Province wants to take that opportunity to document whether there is any contamination before evidence of that contamination disappears. If the site is contaminated, then the Ministry will most often prevent those permits from being issued until someone deals with the contamination.

So if you have a gas station, and you want to tear it down and put in condos or a In-and-Out Burger, you need to demonstrate to the Ministry that the land is not contaminated before you change the use. If it is contaminated, you need to either clean that contamination up or demonstrate through a rigorous science-based “Risk Assessment” that the contamination is contained, isn’t impacting your neighbours, and will not cause harm to human health or the environment at any time in the future. If the contamination is not stable, or if it could possibly cause harm, then you are not getting your permit, and your condo-building or burger-schlepping dreams will have to wait.

Cleaning it up can mean a lot of things. Sometimes, you just go in there with an excavator and dig out all of the contaminated soil and throw some ORC in the hole to cause hydrocarbon-eating bacteria to bloom in the groundwater. Bob’s yer uncle.

However, if the contamination is a long way down, it can be really expensive to dig it out, especially on an urban lot. Sometimes the contamination has migrated to include the neighbouring property, and the neighbour doesn’t want their building to be excavated. Disposing of this contaminated soil can be expensive. The cost of a complicated excavation can easily exceed the value of the land.

Alternately, in most cases the contamination will not last forever. Gasoline spilled in the ground will migrate downwards until it hits groundwater, then sit on top of the groundwater like Cointreau on top of a B-52. Some of it evaporates and moves back up through the soil, some is dissolved in the groundwater and flows away- diluting with distance. Some simply breaks down chemically in to less harmful compounds, while some gets eaten up by natural hydrocarbon-metabolizing bacteria. All of these degradation processes can be helped along from the surface.

You can stick wells in the ground and blow air down into the hydrocarbons and groundwater (“air sparging”). This breaks up the hydrocarbons so they dissipate, increases the evaporation, and provides fresh oxygen that encourages bacterial decomposition of the gas. You can also stick tubes higher in the ground and suck out the vapours, accelerating the dissipation. You can stick chemicals down the wells that will accelerate the degradation (but this is tightly controlled by the Water Act – you cannot stick the kind of dispersants they used in the Deepwater Horizon spill into a well in BC- things like Milk of Magnesia are typically used to boost oxygen levels).

Regardless, this type of in-situ remediation can take years or even decades, and in the meantime we can end up with a vacant lot, surrounded by a rental fence, with white pipes sticking out of the ground everywhere. Those white pipes are monitoring wells, which are used to keep track of the groundwater conditions, or the air sparging or vapour extraction wells for in-situremediation systems.

Or, of course, the owner can do absolutely nothing. (In reporting, this is what they call “burying the lead”). You see, nothing in the Environmental Management Act or the Contaminated Sites Regulation actually forces the owner of a contaminated site to clean it up.

That’s right. The owner is limited by what (s)he can do with the contaminated land (because they can’t get those municipal permits), but unless they have a compelling business reason to do something about the contamination, there is no law or other requirement saying they need to take any action towards cleaning it up. So the weed-covered empty lot can sit there literally forever.

It is at least theoretically possible for the Director of Waste Management (the senior bureaucrat in the Land Remediation Section of the Ministry) to order an owner to clean up contamination, but that power is very, very rarely exercised. In practice, the Ministry only does this if there is an imminent risk to persons or property caused by the contamination. Not unprecedented, but very unusual. There is no sign the Ministry is interested in increasing this power. And there is nothing a City or neighbouring properties can do to compel the Ministry to take this action.

So why is it (apparently) always abandoned gas stations? Near as I can tell, there are three reasons for this:

First, pretty much every gas station built before 1980 is a contamination nightmare. The old technology of buried single-walled steel tanks almost invariably leaked after a few years in the ground. Since gas was so damn cheap before the 1970’s oil crises, it was of little concern to most station owners if they lost a few gallons a day to leaks, presuming they even noticed. It was cheaper to let it happen than to dig the tanks up and replace them. A few gallons a day can, however, add up to a hell of a lot of hydrocarbon in the ground over several years. Then there was the waste oil and solvent disposal methods from the 60s. At a time when PCBs were used to clean carburettors, let’s just say housekeeping to protect the environment was not standard practice at Cooter’s Garage. This is no longer the case, I hasten to note. Modern gas stations use double-walled vacuum-sealed plastic underground tanks with automatic leak detection systems, and are very careful to recycle their valuable waste oils and solvents, mostly due to tougher laws. The legacy of old practices still haunts us.

A second factor is that there are far fewer gas stations today than there were 40 years ago. The smaller two-pump Mom’n’Pop operations have been replaced with larger multi-bay major company franchises. This means many of the former stations from the Century of the Car have been closed in the last couple of decades, and they all probably have contamination issues.

The third factor is that the closed stations usually belong to large multi-national oil companies. These companies have a lot of assets, and are in no big rush to divest themselves of fiddly little assets like a block of City land. The minuscule cost of paying property tax on an empty lot in New Westminster disappears when these companies are making multi-billion-dollar revenues. Commonly, the cost and hassle of cleaning up the land isn’t offset by the selling price they could get for it. They can sit on it for years, maybe the contamination will get better with gradual degradation and dissipation. Or not.

One thing they do not want to do is sell it without cleaning it up first, and that is, again, because the CSR does not allow for the “persons responsible” for the contamination to sell that liability. Nothing (except for your bank’s loan officer) prevents you from buying a contaminated site, but you cannot legally “buy the contamination”.

This actually makes sense. The last thing we want is for every owner of a contaminated site to sell that liability to some numbered company registered in Belize. That company could buy up 10 contaminated sites then go insolvent and disappear, abandoning the land for the Province to clean up. No-body wants that.

So the person who caused the contamination will always own it, as long as they exist. The big oil companies plan to exist for a long time. If they sell you their contaminated land, they no longer control what you do on that land. You could go back and clean the contamination up, and send the bill to the Oil Company, but if they wanted to spend that money themselves without you being the unaccountable middle-man. You could even conceivably do something that harms yourself or others with that contamination that belongs to the oil company, and the oil company will be responsible for some of that harm. Oil companies hate risk, so they would rather just own the land, put a fence around it, say “no trespassing” and do whatever due diligence is required to keep anyone from messing with their contamination. Just to be on the safe side.

So too often, the most rational business case is to just let that white pipe farm sit there, contributing nothing to the community for perpetuity. And there is nothing the City can do about it.

Some time in the next week or two, I will write Part 2 – about what the Province, Cities and neighbourhoods can do about these sites.

What a difference a year makes

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

It was only a year ago, just a couple of days before Earth Day, that the Harper Government(tm) announced their progress at tearing the heart out of Canada’s strongest habitat protection legislation.

Their re-writing of major portions of the Fisheries Act (a part of the Mother of All Omnibus Bills) sent shock-waves across the community of biologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists whose job it was to assure the protections afforded by legislation were followed by industry and the general public. This was partly because they recognized the combined neutering of the Fisheries Act and the Environmental Assessment Act would result in less protection of ecological areas, but mostly because the people whose job it was to advise their clients in industry about how to follow the laws now had very little idea what the law was!

It is like Victoria announcing (as part of their budget, none the less) that they would remove all references to speed limits from the Motor Vehicle Act, without telling the Police ahead of time, giving the police a chance to comment on the changes, assessing the potential impacts of the changes, or developing any mechanism to permit safe driving with no speed limits.

In typical Harper Government(r) style, they put a lot more thought into the photo op and announcement than they did into the actual legislation. Here we see a photo of Minister of Fishy Stuff Ashfield standing beside James Brennan of Ducks Unlimited, to demonstrate how conservation groups support the changes, so therefore it must all be good.

(source: http://www.ducks.ca/national-news/2012/04/duc-supports-strategic-direction-fisheries-act-changes/)

I am going to put aside for now my own reservations about Ducks Unlimited. They are not so much an ecological protection group as a group interested in preserving areas where they can take their dogs for a walk while filling ducks with steel shot. However, they have been effective at preserving large tracts of vitally important wetlands, so I will judge them by results, not by motivations.

There they were, amongst Canada’s (well, America’s, but I guess DU is exempt Joe Oliver’s list of suspiciously-foreign-funded shit-list of environmental protection groups) most renown conservation groups lining up with the Minister of Fishiness talking about how this was going to be great, a bold step forward in fish protection rationalization and conservation management mumble mumble mumble…

At the time, it made more sense than appeared on the surface. Although the changes in the Fisheries Act were specifically requested by and delivered to large oil companies, at the time of the announcement all the talk was about how these amendments would help the poor suffering rural farmer who was tired of having to jump through regulatory hoops every time he wanted to maintain his drainage ditch.

Turns out now, the poor rural farmer got screwed, at least in BC. You see, until these changes, the farmer would simply ask his local Fisheries Officer to approve the works he needed done. The Fisheries Officer, being a local Fisheries and Oceans Canada employee with training in fish ecology would tell the farmer to follow standard fish protection practice (keep sediment out of the open stream, don’t work in the stream during windows of time critical to salmon lifecycles, don’t block the stream completely, etc.) and go for it. It was a simple straight-forward process that just paralleled good farming practice, it was completely free to the farmer (except for a week or two planning ahead), and there was lots of guidance available from the DFO. You know, government services you pay taxes for, that kind of stuff.

Now, that Fisheries Officer is no longer going to provide that approval, or that guidance. Mostly because she is likely one of the 30% of Fisheries and Oceans staff that got fired. The approval process will be centralized, so the person granting approvals will not necessarily know your local conditions, or even be a biologist. since the approvals are science-based, the poor farmer is likely going to need to hire a Qualified Professional (biologist, geoscientist or engineer) to assess whether the works constitute a threat to fish, then get that professional to help navigate through the approval process. Trust me, those professionals don’t come cheap.

Well, they are cheap in context of a multi-billion dollar pipeline project (as Big Oil Corp Inc. will already have Qualified Professionals on staff), but for a potato farmer in Chilliwack, that $200/hr consulting fee he will be paying to someone who recently got laid off from a job at DFO to complete an Aquatic Effects Assessment will not be small potatoes. These guys should be thinking about rounding up the calves and heading back downtown, because they just got royally screwed by Minister Ashfield and the Harper Government(tm).

Back to Ducks Unlimited. With the changes to the Fisheries Act being marketed last year as a big boon to long suffering farmers, it was little surprise that Ducks Unlimited, with its deep rural and agricultural support base, especially in the Prairies, were ready to line up in support of the changes. One year on, it seems they might have caught wind that the bag of ducks they were sold might contain more than one cat. Just this week, Ducks Unlimited Canada were signatories to a Joint Policy Statement with other conservation groups, which expresses significant concerns with the changes including:

“Without explicit policy support it will be unclear where the Act applies on the landscape making it difficult to implement and enforce”;

“If some forms of harm are not prohibited under the Act it is unclear how a long term trend of declining quality of recreational fisheries will be avoided due to incremental impacts”; and

“Recent reductions in staff and research facilities make it unclear how DFO intends to support implementation of the amended Act and the new fisheries protection policy”.

Makes me wonder how long until Ducks Unlimited are added to the list of foreign-funded radicals trying to destroy Canada through environmental protection.

sunday! Sunday! SUNDAY!

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I wrote a bit about this Surrey Fraser Docks coal issue a couple of months ago, but the issue (mostly, I think, due to the badger-like political ferocity of one James Crosty) keeps on rolling.

Several Municipalities up and down the Fraser have now taken, or are exploring, positions on this project, and even the Metro Vancouver Parks and Environment Committee discussed the issue at their last meeting. Coal terminals seem to be in the spotlight right now, with Port Metro Vancouver once again serving as whipping boy in the political discussion.

The Port might be getting concerned, as I was one of those randomly selected folk to take part in a phone survey “to determine local opinions about transportation issues in your community”. The survey was a short one, but had a couple of themes (with a short version of my answers):

What is the most important issue in your community? (Transportation)

Do you know much about Port Metro Vancouver? (yes, more than any healthy person should)

Do you believe international trade is important to your community? (a question so ambiguous, it is hard to answer)

Do you trust communications you receive from the Port? (This was an interesting one. I had to answer “yes”, as I don’t think the Port management are dishonest or secretive – I think they are misguided and irresponsible. They have not made it a secret that they want to turn ALR land into industrial land, or that they will continue to profit from an expanding hydrocarbon export business and will consider Climate Change impacts as somebody else’s problem)

Do you know about the Surrey Fraser Docks plan to move coal? (yes, see above)

Do you agree with moving commodities like coal and oil through our ports? (problem here’s is the use of the phrase “commodities like”. I support the moving of grain through our ports, grain is a commodity, is moved in bulk, and comprises mostly hydrocarbons – is that “like” Coal? I do not support the moving of coal for the reasons I outlined in my February post, and I determined this is really a question about coal, and answered no)

Be sure to look out for the results of this survey, as I have heard through Twitter that many people who have strong opinions on this project were asked to respond.

And if you were NOT called, but want to voice your opinion about the Coal Terminal proposal in Surrey, or even about the ethics of British Columbia ramping up coal production and export at the same time that atmospheric carbon dioxide is approaching 400ppm, you have an opportunity this Sunday.

I encourage you to drop by and learn where the conversation is going on this topic:

The Wal-Mart enigma.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I work for a City, and I serve on some civic committees and volunteer for a few not-for-profits, so I go to a lot of meetings.

Yes, some of those meetings can be crushingly dull, but most are interesting and informative and productive (otherwise, I don’t stick with the organization too long – I bore easily). Occasionally, there are great moments that could not be repeated in any other setting.

An example happened a few days ago, and I will spare the who-what-where details to protect the innocent. There was a consultant talking on some arcane (but pertinent to the meeting) operation of the free market to a (in her perception) less-informed member of the committee. Everything below is paraphrased from my memory:

Consultant: “Let me give you an example- you shop at Wal-Mart, right?”

Citizen: “No. I don’t”

Consultant (after brief pause to re-group, addresses crowd of ~20): “How many people here shop at Wal-Mart?”

Crowd:      [crickets]
       [snickers]        
       [one hand goes up]

Consultant (long pregnant pause): “Ok, people shop at Wal-Mart, right, and…”

It was funny because the consultant clearly didn’t know the crowd.

This was a group of hyper-engaged citizens, most of them (like the person who said “No, I don’t”) were taking time out of their busy day to take part in a public consultation for no reward, just to take a small role in making the City a better place. Some actually had to book time off work and (in my case) re-schedule some deferred time off to take part. We were not there because we were paid, or even for the free cookies. We were there because we give a shit about our community.

Now I recognize that many people shop at Wal-Mart, and this is not about judging them. The majority of the population may, I really don’t care to know the statistics. But in that room full of people who value their community enough that they invest their “free” time and their income into making it a better place? Wal-Mart is for the most part not part of that equation. Frankly, we would rather pay a few pennies more for (or buy a few fewer) socks or bags of nails or lawn furniture knowing that the marginal difference is more likely to be re-invested in our local community, through better wages, local sourcing, or non-predatory pricing policies.

Of course, if she said “Costco”, she might have got a different result. I don’t shop there, but it seems that Costco unfairly avoids the local-retail-crushing non-sustainable-consumption community-killing reputation that Wal-Mart carries. And apparently Target will also avoid that fate, based on the conversations I have heard in reference to potential Uptown tenants. I wonder why that is.

Even a dull meeting can bring moments of insight, and new questions to ask.

Off to the Races

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Today the writ has dropped. We are off to the races.

This event has much less meaning than it used to. Back when elections could be called on any day convenient to the Majority, this represented the true start of a civilised and tolerable 28-day election period.

We no longer live in those more-civilized times.

Our elections are now drawn-out American-style affairs where everyone can see them coming years in advance and every decision made by government is based on their fixed timing. This campaign has been the longest in BC history, really starting 25 months ago when Christy Clark won the leadership of the BC Liberals, or maybe 2½ months later when she won her By-election. Hard to pick a specific start date, but we have been bombarded with campaigning and advertising for more than a year. The lawn signs and campaign finance disclosures starting tomorrow are really just a new phase.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.
              – Premier Clark

The worst part is that we have had to endure a year of a government who is campaigning instead of governing, and the next damn government is going to do the same thing. The fact the Liberals have spend the last 6 months asking the opposition to disclose their election platform shows that they have failed to understand the role of government vs. opposition outside of the 28-day campaign period…

…wait, I’m going off on a rant here, and that was not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to talk about how elections impact community. New Westminster is in many ways a small town, and this is even more apparent at election time. Our concerns are often local, the same familiar voices pop up – you will likely see Dave Brett helping at the Queen’s Park All-Candidate event, and me helping out at the NWEP one, and people will flood to Tenth to the Fraser to get the best local on-line coverage. We know Bill Zander will have something to say at a Public Meeting, and Ted Eddy will write a letter to the Paper before this is done. Often, the same issues come to the surface, and we know where many people stand on those issues, and we know the grudges people have. Grudges are easy to hold, hard to move past.

However, 29 days from now, we are all going to have to keep living here in the same small community, the “winners” and the “losers” together. How we conduct ourselves in the next 28 days is going to frame how we work together to keep building this community that we all care enough about to go through this.

Going into this election, we have a great field of local candidates. I have had the opportunity over the last few months to have lengthy sit-down conversations with three of the four declared candidates. I feel confident that any of them would represent New Westminster well in Victoria. They are all approachable, honest, and good listeners. Their ideas vary somewhat, but I get the sense they all have the best interests of New Westminster and BC in mind, and that they want to serve this community for the right reasons. A “bad” result for New Westminster on May 14th is pretty unlikely. It doesn’t have to be divisive – elections can be about bringing people together.

The only “bad” result will be if we spend the next 4 weeks talking about what divides us (“Socialists” vs. “Free Enterprise”), instead of talking about what we all aspire towards, and how our plans to get there differ. The political system, representative democracy itself, is just a tool that allows us to set collective priorities and pool our resources towards achieving popular goals. We know we disagree on the pathway (that’s why we have elections) but we all share the same goal – a safe, prosperous, livable community.

The politics itself should never be the goal. If it is, you are doing it wrong. Argument for argument sake is part of the reason people become cynical about the process.

I know who is getting my vote this time. As someone at a recent political event (and self-confessed “Angry Young Tweeter”) reminded me, no-one is 100% sure until they write on the ballot; so with that in mind I will declare myself 95% certain. I plan to attend events and hear all of the candidates speak, and I hope I can have meaningful dialogues with each candidate to see where our ideas merge or diverge. I am even helping organize an All-Candidates event, one that will hopefully attract a diverse crowd to meet the Candidates. But I don’t think I am going to “declare” who I am voting for right now. I might blog about it before the end of it all, but for now, we’ll hold onto the secret ballot. That said, my regular readers probably know who I am supporting, and you might see a bag sign in my front yard before its all over (if Ms.NWimby will let me).

More important, I want to keep the lines of conversation to all candidates open. For good reason: In a “small town” like New Westminster, politics can be personal, but campaigning shouldn’t be. Political disagreement for me has always represented the start of the discussion, not the end.

Just look at James Crosty. We spar quite a bit on twitter, call each other names and ridicule the hell out of each other’s opinions or ideas. He is usually wrong, of course, but so am I. Neither of us have very good grammar. Yet we always seem to laugh at ourselves as much as at each other, and none of this disagreement has prevented us from shaking hands, sharing a conversation or a beer. I consider James a friend, and even when I disagree with him, I perceive that his only interest is in making his community a better place. We have the same goal, we just see different pathways towards it, and that is what makes our conversations fun. I learn from James, and I hope he learns from me, even if only by cautionary example!

In contrast, I was at an event recently where one of the campaign workers (not, I hasten to add, the Candidate) asked me if I would sign the Candidate’s nominations papers. I said “sure”, and she confirmed I was an eligible voter and lived in New Westminster (-all good-) or if I had signed anyone else’s papers (-uh oh…). You see, a few weeks previous, I had signed the nomination papers for another candidate running locally. The campaign worker’s reaction was like I had spit in her face: a mix of incredulity and disgust. I tried to explain that the person whose forms I signed was good person, running for the right reasons, honest, etc. etc. The campaign worker left in a huff and sent me dagger-eyes for the rest of the event.

It occurred to me afterwards that she should have immediately identified me as a “soft supporter” (I was at her candidate’s event, after all) and turned the charm on to make me feel welcome and important, and try to convince me the merits of her candidate. Instead, she made me feel like an outsider who should be treated with suspicion. Clearly, she did not feel the same about community and politics as I do. Or maybe she just cared more abut the path than the destination. I don’t think she lived in New Westminster.

So I am calling on Candidates, Pundits, Twitterers and Trolls to try to keep it above the belt, try to hold on to your sense of humour. You can take the issues seriously without taking yourself too seriously. The more voters we can get to polls from all sides, the more included people will be, and the stronger a community we build.

I hope to see many of you on May 4th for a real community-building all-candidates event.Then i hope you all vote.