Opinion: Vancouver needs a ward system to give neighbourhoods a voice | Daily Hive

Map of Vancouver neighbourhoods. (City of Vancouver)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Penny Gurstein, a professor emeritus at the School of Community and Regional Planning and a founding director of the Housing Research Collaborative at the University of British Columbia.

I don’t think I am the only one who is bewildered by the upcoming municipal election in Vancouver.

We have seven political parties (three just formed for this election) and independents who have slates for mayor, Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board, for a whopping total of 130 candidates to choose from.

Who has the time or energy to responsibly analyse so many candidates in order to form an opinion about who to vote for?

We should not have to spend hours going through the websites of the parties to only find a paucity of significant policy directions and information on candidates’ positions. All of them want to win and are willing to tell us what we want to hear. The municipal at-large electoral system based on political parties is effectively a barrier to the democratic process because it is so overwhelming that many just do not bother to vote.

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Going to public debates by candidates should be informative but rarely is. Even worse is when the majority party on City Council picks and chooses where to send its candidates, as has been done in this election, where the incumbent mayor rarely shows up for these debates.

When we have a party elected with a majority on City Council, which has occurred a number of times over the years, we often find that this party chooses to only be beholden to those who elected it. This has produced misguided policies without proper consultation and consideration. The provincial government has now stepped in to direct many municipal policies, which further distances the public from participation in decision-making.

The municipal governance of Vancouver is not working. The at-large electoral system currently used by Vancouver has enabled top-down decision-making by incumbent-heavy parties, with large swaths of the population disenfranchised and without a voice. All major cities in Canada have a ward system except for Vancouver. It is time for a change.

In a ward system, city councillors are elected according to defined neighbourhoods (wards). At election time, there are fewer candidates running in specific wards, making it easier for the electorate to better know the candidates and resulting in a more simplified ballot.

Campaign financing has become a significant factor in winning elections. Those parties that can rely on people with deep pockets are more likely to have the most prominent campaigns. In a ward system, candidates do not need massive funding or city-wide name recognition to compete in a local campaign, allowing more independent candidates to enter the race.

Once elected, city councillors are accountable to their specific communities, resulting in less neglect of the needs of specific neighbourhoods. Knowing that there is an elected official on City Council who represents a designated area makes it easier for the public to reach out if they have concerns. Critical City Council decisions are better made when the diverse interests of the various wards are heard.

There are, of course, some downsides. A city councillor elected in a particular ward may lack a city-wide perspective. Competing local priorities may make decision-making difficult. A ward system may result in higher levels of government spending. However, all of the downsides raised above can also be found in the current at-large system. The at-large system favours special interest groups and is not any more accountable to the city-wide electorate.

Vancouver used to have a very different trajectory. Local area planning in Vancouver in the 1970s marked a significant shift away from top-down urban renewal towards resident-led, participatory planning, largely driven by a reaction against the destruction of heritage neighbourhoods like Strathcona and the proposed freeway projects, but also by pressure to densify neighbourhoods like Kitsilano. This period saw a rise in community activism and a City Council that worked well with the city planners and heeded their advice.

We are now in a very different era from the 1970s. We are back to the worst kind of top-down planning — planning without any real insight on city building, led by politicians with a shockingly low level of civic understanding who are not listening to their planners nor the citizens who elected them. What can be done?

We need to reclaim our neighbourhoods and city. Genuine participation requires that input actually informs and influences decision-making and builds trust. What is occurring in our city is not meaningful public participation. Decisions are already made and public input is ignored. It has become simply a requirement with no intention of incorporating public values. Citizens who have justifiable concerns about the impact questionable decisions will have on their communities are too often unfairly characterized as “NIMBYs”.

Given that we don’t have a ward system, which at least would have elected officials who would represent particular neighbourhoods, we need to strengthen our existing neighbourhood associations and start demanding accountability from those we elect.

In this civic election, we need to ask the hard questions of candidates: What knowledge/skills can you bring to City Council decision-making? What are your priorities? How are you going to work with diverse communities? What are your strategies for listening to community members and how are you going to incorporate what you hear? How are you going to make decisions?

Drilling down, we need to know if the candidate and party really understand what municipal governance entails and what its limits are. At the minimum, they need to have ideas on how to create a thriving city, address budgets, affordable housing, infrastructure and community services, and engage with their constituents. They also need to recognize that their role is to tackle urban issues within their power to resolve. Embroiling themselves in complex geo-political issues is beyond their purview.

Creating a city for all of its citizens requires a reimagining of our relationship with our neighbourhood and city, and what, individually and collectively, we can do to develop a true civic discourse. A ward system, or hybrid ward system, would be a step in the right direction.

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