Vision Vancouver

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Vision Vancouver is one of three parties represented on Vancouver City Council in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vision was formed in the months leading up to the 2005 municipal election.

Formation

As centre-left civic party, Vision was founded by former COPE members first elected to Vancouver city council in 2002. Following that election, Mayor Larry Campbell and Councillors Jim Green, Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson were soon dubbed "COPE Light" by the local media due to their moderate positions on taxation and development, as opposed to the more leftist "COPE Classic" Councillors.

Ongoing disagreements between the two factions led to Campbell and his allies forming an independent COPE caucus in December 2004. At the same time, supporters of Campbell and his allies created a fundraising organization independent of COPE called "Friends of Larry Campbell."

This group and its backers eventually formed a new party called "Vision Vancouver," initially to be led by Campbell. However, when Campbell announced that he would not seek a second term as Mayor, he called on Jim Green to run to succeed him. The party decided in August 2005 to run only five of a possible ten Council candidates and did not contest school board and park board slate elections.

In the election for Vancouver City Council held in November 2005, four Vision Vancouver candidates (Raymond Louie, Tim Stevenson, Heather Deal and George Chow) were elected, but the party's mayoral candidate, Jim Green, was defeated by the NPA's Sam Sullivan. Six members of the NPA were elected along with one for COPE.

Current status

For the November 2008, election, Vision was seen as a serious contender for control of the city due to the perceived unpopularity of the Sam Sullivan Non-Partisan Association (NPA) team. On Father's Day, June 2008 Vision held an election to nominate their mayoral candidate. The choices were Gregor Robertson (a local 'Green' businessman owner of the Happy Planet juice company and a New Democratic Party Member of the Legislative Assembly for Vancouver-Fairview), Raymond Louie (serving Vision city councillor), and Allan De Genova (Independent Vancouver Parks Board Commissioner who defected from the NPA because of his dislike of Sam Sullivan's leadership). The original dynamic for this contest was changed when the NPA voted to replace as their mayoral candidate incumbent Sam Sullivan with longtime Councillor and businessman (editor of Business in Vancouver newspaper) Peter Ladner. Gregor Robertson was nominated to be the Vision candidate for mayor in 2008 despite his perceived similarity to the main rival NPA's candidate. The turnout for this contest was very high and many new members joined the party for this reason.

Under the direction of mayoral candidate Gregor Robertson, Vision Vancouver responded to COPE's requests (dating back to a change in leadership at COPE in May, 2007) to negotiate an electoral coalition with COPE and the Vancouver Green Party (who ran joint slates with COPE in previous years). Vision Vancouver, COPE and the Greens agreed to support Gregor Robertson as mayor, run uncompeting slates and coordinate other elements of the election. The new Vision party attracted many potential nominees for City, Parks and School Board positions.

On November 15, 2008, Gregor Robertson was elected Mayor of Vancouver. The Vision-COPE-Green coalition swept to power. The only Vision Vancouver candidate not to be elected was Kashmir Dhalliwal. The following is a list of all successful candidates:

Council:

• Gregor Robertson (Mayor)
• Heather Deal (incumbent)
• Tim Stevenson (incumbent)
• Raymond Louie (incumbent)
• George Chow (incumbent)
• Andrea Reimer
• Kerry Jang
• Geoff Meggs

Parks Board:

• Constance Barnes
• Sara Blyth
• Raj Hundal
• Aaron Jasper

Board of Education:

• Patti Bacchus
• Sharon Gregson
• Ken Clement
• Mike Lombardi

Vision Vancouver's Executive currently consists of 11 members:

• Carolyn Askew
• David Eaves
• Esther Rausenberg
• Denise Taschereau
• Joie Warnock
• Martha Burton
• Vanessa Gearey
• Vardip Dhaliwal
• Mira Oreck
• Stepan Vdovine
• George Jung

See also

• List of mayors of Vancouver
• Vancouver City Council
• Non-Partisan Association
• Coalition of Progressive Electors

External links

• VoteVision

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