Suzanne Anton, NPA candidate - Photo by Brent Granby

On November 19, BC voters will be electing their respective municipal councils. Well, some voters at least, will take advantage of the opportunity. Municipal elections have a historically dismal participation rate. One of the most interesting races will, of course, take place in Vancouver.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and his team (under Vision Vancouver’s banner) will try to hang on to his post, and his council majority as well, for a second mandate. The battle will be (principally) against the Non Partisan Association (NPA), and its mayoral candidate, Suzanne Anton. Ms Anton is playing big as she holds her team’s sole seat on council. This is to say that should she lose against Gregor Robertson, a likely prospect if not a probability, she will be giving up her seat.

This campaign should be heated and both Vision Vancouver and the NPA are likely to invest sums of money of a magnitude never seen before in a municipal election in Vancouver. Both teams have already fired at one another and the battle should be fierce. For the NPA to gain more than one seat on council would be an improvement over the 2008 election, when the team lost not only its mayoral status but was also greatly marginalized, with only one seat left on council, that of Ms Anton.

For Gregor Robertson, this election is an important one. His first mandate has been, in spite of a few controversies greatly highlighted in the media, a tepid one. Many of his main priorities (announced in 2008) were certainly toyed with, but no one can say that he has managed to transform Vancouver in any major way.

What great works he put forth ended up creating a certain degree of dissatisfaction.  I refer here to homeless shelters, downtown’s bike lanes, and this ambition of his to make Vancouver the greenest city on earth. Speaking of which, no one seems to know what that means, exactly, or to what degree he intended to take any so-called green measures, in order to assess whether the goals have been achieved or not.

Anyway, it’s not that the initiatives are bad in themselves; it’s the way they have been presented that created the source of such dissatisfaction. One leitmotiv in the complaints against Mayor Robertson is that his administration has repeatedly used the screen of pseudo-consultations, while in fact, its priorities were already set.  Additionally, his tendency, during his mandate, to augment municipal taxes much beyond inflation rates, also risks becoming a campaign theme.

This said, I think that Gregor Robertson should be able to secure a second mandate. The municipal council itself, on the other hand, should see some changes.

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Translation Monique Kroeger