Opinion: Vancouver joins San Fran in embracing common-sense politics

Opinion: Vancouver joins San Francisco in embracing common-sense politics

Downtown Vancouver (EB Adventure Photography/Shutterstock)

Written for Daily Hive Urbanized by Adam Zivo, who is an international journalist and LGBTQ2S+ activist. He is best known for his weekly National Post column, his coverage of the war in Ukraine, and for founding the LoveisLoveisLove campaign. Zivo’s work has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, Xtra Magazine, and Ottawa Citizen, among other publications.

After a contentious municipal election, the ABC party swept into power in Vancouver, winning the mayoral race while securing large majorities on the City Council, Park Board, and School Board. Running on a pro-police platform that prioritized public safety, every single ABC candidate won their seat, including Ken Sim, who dominated the mayoral race with 51% of the vote and left incumbent Kennedy Stewart in distant second.

It was a stunning rebuke of the city’s soft-on-crime status quo — and suggests that Vancouver might be following the path of San Francisco, another traditionally progressive city that has embraced policing in response to surging crime.

Crime in and around the downtown Vancouver peninsula has gotten out of control as assaults, stabbings, and thefts have become disturbingly commonplace. Chinese Canadians have been especially hard-hit, particularly in Chinatown. However, many Vancouverites, including Kennedy Stewart and numerous municipal candidates, refused to acknowledge surging crime and gaslit other citizens about its existence.

This gaslighting was ultimately fuelled by middle-class, ultra-progressive activists who, often living in comfortable neighbourhoods, cannot fathom that crime actually harms people and is not an abstract concept. For this crowd, militant opposition to policing, which includes minimizing crime, is a status symbol — a badge of purity bought at the expense of other people’s safety.

This crowd often cited statistics showing that overall crime rates in Vancouver are declining, without acknowledging how, despite this, violent crime has nonetheless been measurably rising downtown. Similarly, they failed to consider how sample biases could conceal the full extent of crime. For example, some business owners have apparently stopped reporting crime, as they are overwhelmed and feel dejected by the broken revolving-door justice system.

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In Saturday’s election, voters were given a choice: believe radical activists and their political allies, or trust the eyes and ears of fellow citizens begging for safety. They made their choice clear and overwhelmingly embraced the pro-police ABC party. In making this choice, Vancouver’s trajectory has shown a remarkable similarity to San Francisco’s political evolution.

Like Vancouver, San Francisco has a crippling housing affordability crisis, a tradition of being soft on crime, and an exploding problem with street violence that has been particularly harsh on Asian communities.

This year, San Franciscans got fed up with crime and reprioritized public safety. In March, Mayor London Breed called for more police enforcement. Then, in the summer, San Francisco held a contentious referendum on recalling (firing) Chesa Boudin, the city’s notoriously soft-on-crime district attorney, ultimately leading to his ouster. The referendum on Boudin was a turning point in San Francisco’s politics — unlike the mayor’s about-face, it required voter buy-in and thus demonstrated the popular will for change.

Meanwhile in San Francisco… the district attorney will be removed from office for implementing policies that have contributed to increased theft, vandalism, and violent crime, and deteriorating public safety. Take note, #vanpoli. https://t.co/0nygQ82dVd

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) June 8, 2022

As in SF, Seattle, Portland, and L.A., the progressive mayor in Vancouver, B.C. had allowed a massive open drug scene to spiral out of control.

Voters on Friday elected a new mayor who has promised to end the chaos by expanding police & social workers.https://t.co/HG9YTH6cvr pic.twitter.com/DeVGgWSUIf

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 17, 2022

Vancouver’s progressive mayor enabled open air dug dealing and drug use, just like progressive mayors in the US. He enabled addiction by removing consequences for destructive behaviors, including breaking laws, and has promoted the idea of just giving addicts drugs to use.

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 17, 2022

The progressive mayor rejected what they did in Portugal, which he called “too restrictive,” and instead advocated simply giving addicts drugs to use and places to use them. The result was death and urban chaos. Voters had enough and voted him out of office.

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 17, 2022

In Portugal, if you’re caught doing drugs in public, you’re arrested. That was too strict for the progressive Vancouver mayor and so voters rightly removed him https://t.co/d8sEfWd41f

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 17, 2022

Boudin had been elected to his office in 2019 and, as a staunch leftist who was closely aligned with the city’s radical activist class, championed an academic approach to crime. Preoccupied with structural equities, Boudin decided that actually enforcing the law was not a priority. Predictably, under his tenure, criminals terrorized locals without any accountability, leading to several high-profile cases where repeat offenders killed people after being quickly released for previous crimes. Little was done about the city’s rising anti-Asian hate crimes.

When polled, an overwhelming majority of San Franciscans, spread out across every single social category (i.e. income, race, age, sex), believed that crime had gone up. But Boudin and his supporters denied the problem and often referred to statistics showing decreasing crime rates. Like Kennedy Stewart, they ignored the possibility that crime was being underreported as citizens gave up on a dysfunctional justice system.

Asian Americans, exhausted with having their safety compromised, then spearheaded the referendum that removed Boudin from power. On the whole, 55% of San Franciscans supported firing Boudin, but the numbers were much higher among Asian Americans, who voted against him more than any other racial group.

The parallels between Vancouver and San Francisco, though not perfect, are uncanny. In both cases, an incestuous relationship between municipal politicians and radical activists precipitated a crime wave that disproportionately affected Asian communities. In both cases, Asian communities rallied together and led a broader movement to restore order.

And, in both cases, radical activists have tried to delegitimize the popular will. In San Francisco, they portrayed Boudin’s removal as a far-right conspiracy enabled by dark money. Their concerns about shady money had a shred of legitimacy because business interests donated to the recall campaign. However, the impact of these donations was overblown — Boudin himself had received substantial donations (i.e. from unions) and each side’s campaign war chest apparently amounted to only a few million dollars, which is peanuts for political battles on the US level for a major municipality.

These activists also patronizingly argued that Asian communities could not legitimately want more policing, and obviously had either been manipulated by white people or had sold themselves out in a desperate attempt for white approval. It was impossible for them to imagine that Asian Americans have the capacity to think for themselves and express legitimate disagreements with radical activist orthodoxies.

In Vancouver, radical activists are making the same kinds of arguments in a similar effort to delegitimize the election.

They have tried to portray the ABC party as fascist, which is absurd to the point of self-parody, and argue that the election was bought by “dark money.” They have also tried to minimize ABC’s support among Asian communities – for example, Pivot Legal Representative Meenakshi Mannoe has tweeted that only “capitalist” Asians supported more policing, despite the fact that support for policing was highest in Chinatown, a low-income neighbourhood.

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