The Great Debate
Vancouver’s leading candidates for mayor spent Wednesday evening sparring over the city’s crucial issues of homelessness, addiction and mental health.
In the end, neither Peter Ladner nor Gregor Robertson scored a knockout punch in a debate sponsored byTheTyee.ca and 24 hours, but the public saw pieces of differing opinions emerging in a cautious campaign that has been light on policy discussion so far.
For Robertson, the mayoral candidate with the centre-left Vision Vancouver party, Wednesday’s debate wasa chance to add flesh to his campaign, which has so far been generous with bold promises – ending homelessness by 2015, for example –but stingy with specifics on how to do it.
Off the bat, he promised to force negligent landlords to maintain their buildings with the city’sseldom-used standards of maintenance bylaw. In recent years, the cityhas stepped in to close Downtown Eastside hotels because for various violations, sending low-income tenants onto the streets. He promised, too, to expand the bylaw’s use to beyond the Downtown Eastside.
But the clearest homelessness policy difference emerging between Robertson and Ladner centres on what todo with shelters.
Robertson promised to ensure Vancouver has enough shelter beds to make sure no one has to sleep outside inthe winter months – the Pivot Legal Society obtained government documents earlier this year that suggested local shelters turned people away more than 40,000 times over a nine-month period.
“I don’t think there’s anything strategic and thoughtful about asking people to sleep outside,”Robertson said after a question posed by panelist Nancy Hall, aformer provincial mental health advocate.
Ladner, however, calls shelters a short-term solution that will do nothing to help Vancouver’s severe homelessness crisis in the long-term.
“I don’t think the city should jump in and…take over the responsibilities of the province,” Ladner said, saying Vancouver is home to three-quarters of the region’s shelters but only one-third of its citizens.
Both candidates dodged a question fromThe Tyee’s Monte Paulsen on how far police would be allowed tocrack down on public disorder during the 2010 Olympics.
Public drug use? Public urination? Sleeping outside? Jaywalking? Neither men would say.
“I’m not prepared to violate anybody’s civil rights,” Ladner offered, while Robertson countered with, “We cannot be violating people’s civil rights.”
A question from veteran civic affairs reporter Frances Bula was also met with equal evasiveness. How much money would the platform’s homelessness promises cost, she wondered.
Neither candidate answered the question.
Both candidates renewed promises to lobby the federal government for changes to tax laws to encourage the construction of new rental housing. Homebuilders and developers have long complained that current conditions make it nearly impossible to build rental housing at a profit.
“If we can’t get the federal government to change the tax laws, we’re never going to solve this problem,” Ladner said. “That’s a job for the mayor of Vancouver.”
But Robertson said the city has to focus on partnering with developers in the short-term. “We’re not going to sit around for another 35 years, waiting for tax incentives,” he said.
Unlike previous debates, Wednesday’sforum in a near-capacity St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church on Burrard Street appeared not to be stacked with party stalwarts from either Vision Vancouver or Ladner’s centre-right Non-PartisanAssociation.
