By Glen Korstrom
Vancouver’s civic ballot in November should include more referenda questions than just whether voters support the city’s capital plan, activists say.
They want referenda to determine city policy on issues such as downtown’s separated bike lanes and Edgewater Casino expansion and Metro Vancouver’s growth strategy.
But Mayor Gregor Robertson opposes the referenda, despite answering a questionnaire during the 2008 election campaign saying he and his Vision Vancouver team supported “a larger role for scientific polling and referenda.”
“Referenda are expensive,” Robertson told Business in Vancouver February 22. “They cost an average $1 million to conduct and, typically, are reserved for very significant issues affecting the whole city.”
Victoria is expected to pay $30 million to hold the upcoming referendum on keeping the HST. A 2002 referendum on whether to negotiate First Nations treaty rights cost the provincial government $9 million.
The BC Liberal government was also willing to swallow the cost in 2009 for a question on whether to switch to a new method for selecting MLAs.
Former Vancouver mayor Larry Campbell held the most recent citywide referendum in 2002 when 50% of eligible voters cast ballots and 64% approved hosting the 2010 Olympic Games.
But Robertson said building separated bike lanes downtown and expanding a casino next to BC Place “are not fundamental changes to the city. They’re important changes to get right but referenda are [for] more pivotal, big-picture change.”
Vancouver residents have voted on city capital expenses for many past civic elections, and Robertson said he will continue that tradition.
Resident Jason Lamarche started a petition February 21 calling for a vote on the Hornby and Dunsmuir separated bike lanes on the November ballot. He is using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to promote his cause.
Laura Jones, who is vice-president for B.C. and Yukon with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, supports Lamarche’s initiative.
“The city’s consultation process was a complete sham,” Jones said.
“Consultation was so appallingly bad. The concerns of those most directly affected should not be ignored the way they were in this case.”
Robertson said the Burrard Bridge and Dunsmuir bike lane trials are successes and it’s too early to determine if the Hornby Street bike lane experiment is a success.
City statistics show that in December 800 cyclists used the separated Dunsmuir bike lane daily. That’s less than half the ridership of a summer day in 2010 but more than the 500-rider average daily use before the separated bike lane was built.
Council voted unanimously to install that lane.
The anti-casino Vancouver Not Vegas lobby group has not yet called for a referendum on the expansion of the Edgewater Casino, but many casino opponents have told BIV they support such consultation.
West End Neighbours member Randy Helton’s recent campaign to stop council from raising maximum height restrictions on seven downtown sites failed.
He believes the issue is significant enough for the city’s future that residents should get the chance to vote on the issue. He also agrees with Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver organizer Ned Jacobs, who believes the city should hold a referendum on whether to accept Metro Vancouver’s regional growth strategy (RGS).
In an advertisement for a February 1 luncheon at the Hyatt Regency, the Urban Development Institute called the RGS “the most important document Metro Vancouver has ever produced.”
Jacobs believes the RGS gives unprecedented land-use planning decisions to TransLink, which has an unelected board.
If the growth strategy is passed, he said TransLink could fund transit in ways that reduce government cash flow that would otherwise fund social housing or public amenities.
“It could open up agricultural areas for urban sprawl.”
During the 2008 election campaign, Jacobs’ group asked all mayoral and council candidates if they supported a larger role for scientific polling and referenda. The response from Robertson and his team was a resounding yes.
Robertson’s mayoral opponent in 2008, Peter Ladner, told BIV he doesn’t support referenda, in part because it would require an extensive education campaign to yield relevant results.
“Referenda are really clumsy and blunt instruments for deciding public policy,” he said. “Good public policy is always nuanced and negotiated. It’s grey. Referenda are black and white. You change one word and you change the whole thing. I just don’t like them.”