It may not jump out at you if you read on, but I’m a big, loyal fan of Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, known to intimates as Vancity – a member since 1973.
That said, Vancity’s annual board of directors election defines a boat race, as predictable as votes in North Korea. Vancity takes great pains to get the so-called member-owners to vote. But the fatal flaw starts in the Central Committee. Er, at the top.
Vancity, with $1.6 billion in assets Canada’s biggest credit union, is dominated by its core kneejerk-left, New Democratic Party farm team establishment, tighter than the Chicago political machine in the balmy days of the mayors Richard Daley, father and son.
The elections are so rigidly controlled they’re a caricature of democracy. Carlito Pablo in the Georgia Straight, hardly cool to the NDP, quoted the assessment of Wilson Parasiuk, Rhodes Scholar and former Manitoba NDP cabinet minister, that April’s election for board directorships were “rigged,” comparable with early post-war Communist elections in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The Vancouver Sun’s Don Cayo and Jeff Lee – Vancity members – also weighed in critically.
The issue begins – and only begins – with the nominations and elections committee’s openly plugging its favourites as “recommended.” In the granola-filled backroom of yore, the insiders’ anointed ran for decades as the “Action Slate,” which I guess sounded too overtly political. By any name it’s the same duck that quacks the company song. There’s worse: under the rules campaigning is forbidden. Endorsements likewise. The election booklet publishes candidate profiles but only their motherhood platforms. Were Soviet bloc elections that restrictive? Five got the “recommended” palm for the three directorships. Effectively that limited competition to among the favoured five. Surprise! All five led the list of 13 candidates.
Poll-topper Jan O’Brien is New Democratic Party provincial secretary and spouse of Vancouver’s cycling viaduct-crusher Coun. Geoff Meggs, who with fellow opportunistic parks commissioner Constance Barnes is safely keeping his current political job and salary while seeking a better-paying NDP seat in the legislature, now that smooth-as-snot-on-a-bedpost Adrian Dix’s fortunes are deliriously soaring. Teresa Conway and Greg McDade also won.
Vancity’s Lorraine Wilson, a nice lady, defended the “recommended” practice: the nominations committee chooses candidates “with gaps in the expertise we have.” Surveyed in 2011, 71% of (how many?) respondents agreed that “Vancity should identify the best suited candidates.”
Maybe the foregoing explains why only 18,286 of Vancity’s 479,500 members voted this year – pretty typical. Coincidentally, the people’s bank was distracted defending its mutual fund investments in Alberta’s Northern Gateway oil project.
Young whippersnappers like Pablo, Cayo and Lee may be unaware that Vancity’s lefty culture was consolidated decades ago when 1972-75 NDP cabinet minister Bob Williams, supple public socialist and private entrepreneur, consolidated control of Vancity’s board in an election set up so that members voting for all three directors were obliged to select at least one Action Slate candidate. The undersigned asked in print if Williams – trust me, I liked him – would run in a public election under such strictures. He didn’t respond.
So why am I, on the cutting edge of 15th-century capitalism, an unbudging Vancity loyalist? Because its service is faultless. Its friendly staff are outstanding. And they make a fuss over my dogs. Can’t praise them enough. I own Bank of Nova Scotia stock but never darken the bank’s doors. And as a Vancity staffer once confided, whatever the boardroom ideology and bows to the little people (like its attractive dividends and “socially responsible” grants, $27.2 million last year), Vancity’s front line runs on straightforward conventional banking principles. Just like Wall Street. But clean. •
