“TRANSITIONING” VANCOUVER TOWARD A TRULY SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR OURSELVES AND OUR CHILDREN

 

 

The Work Less Party: What we stand for.

 

-Fundamentally, we believe that we need to “work less, consume and waste less, and live more” in order to preserve our society and the planet.

 

-We believe that it is essential to make Vancouver self-reliant and resilient in the face of future natural and human-induced disasters through a process termed “transition”: Vancouver must begin to “localize” its food supply, find environmentally-sustainable ways to deal with waste, devise novel transportation strategies that reduce our reliance on a car economy, create community-based social services, and find innovative sources of alterative energy. This transition strategy will not only make Vancouver safer for all of its citizens and do our part to help the Earth, but will create the leading edge, vibrant city that many Vancouverites want.

 

-We believe in placing the emphasis on community-based democracy in which neighbourhoods are encouraged and empowered to come up with their own solutions to the problems of the day. These local solutions are then integrated with surrounding communities, finally encompassing all of Vancouver. The key principles of such governance are inclusivity, mutual problem solving, the empowerment of individuals and community advocacy groups, transparency in all processes, and feedback at all levels.

 

The 2008 municipal election in Vancouver:

 

The Work Less Party sees in the upcoming municipal election an opportunity to put before Vancouver's citizens a series of novel solutions to the current problems that our city faces, as well as to the looming regional and global challenges ahead. Politicians and parties promoting status quo solutions or those who pretend to be "green" while advocating failed policies have nothing besides platitudes to add to this crucial debate.

 

The choices before Vancouver's voters could not be any clearer, or more urgent. A vote for Betty Krawczyk for mayor and for the Work Less Party's Council and Park board candidates will put Vancouver firmly on the path toward a truly sustainable future, for ourselves, our children, and our childrens’ children, and one that will serve as a model for cities around the world.

 

 

The Work Less Party and the municipal election: What to “WATCH”

 

We have put together a framework of proposals for dealing with Vancouver’s most pressing problems built around the acronym “WATCH”.  These stand for: Waste, Arts and Culture, Transit, Crime, and Housing and Homelessness. 

 

All of the following proposals are designed to help Vancouver transition toward a resilient, self-sustaining, socially just, and environmentally-aware future. Many of the proposed solutions are already in use in cities around the world.

 

Waste Management

 

The Problem: Landfill is nearing capacity, but burning waste is not the answer.

 

The Solution: Zero waste.

 

The people of Vancouver, and indeed all of Metro Vancouver, are told that we face a crisis of waste management and that our current landfill at Cache Creek will reach capacity by 2012. With the steady growth the city is undergoing, sensible, sustainable, solutions must be found. Various proposals for what do with city waste have been put forward with the creation of waste-to-energy plants the most recent suggestion. Other options put forward by the various levels of government include trucking our waste to Washington State or building a new landfill almost 350 km away in Ashcroft, British Columbia.

While the initial thought of generating power from garbage sounds like a positive solution, the Work Less Party regards this idea as being inherently flawed in that it fails to address the underlying reasons we produce as much waste as we do: We are trapped in an unsustainable economy built on endless consumption. We also agree with Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation, SPEC and countless other environmental organizations that burning “waste”, whether in an incinerator or a gasification plant, does nothing to encourage recycling or reduction, takes precious nutrients away from the natural cycle, creates dangerous toxic slag, and contributes enormously to our city’s carbon footprint. Not only is the notion of burning waste ecological irresponsible, it is also fiscally unsustainable: If waste is burned rather than fully recycled, all of the initial costs of transportation, resource extraction, ecosystem destruction and others must simply be repeated endlessly to make the next round of equally disposable products. Indeed, the insidious nature of this plan is that rather than being a “green” solution, it paradoxically feeds a psychology of consumption in which we are encouraged to consume more of our limited resources in order to create the waste that, in turn, generates the energy to fuel further consumption.

 

Extending the lifespan of the Cache Creek landfill site or creating a new one is also not without its drawbacks. For First Nations people and other residents who live in these areas there is the constant threat of contamination of their land, air, and water. Even with proper liners, contamination due to leakage is inevitable. The cost of fuel and the carbon emissions needed to transport our waste far away are also not ecologically sustainable solutions.

 

What are the true environmental options?  There are a number of these, but all require us to come clean with ourselves as individuals and as a society by acknowledging that we cannot preserve the planet and all of its species if we maintain a mentality of endless consumption[1]. The Work Less Party is in agreement with a waste strategy now gaining momentum around the world: “zero waste”. Implementing zero waste involves finding ways to compost all organic material, vastly expand recycling programs, and institute a policy of “producer responsibility” that shifts the primary burden of recycling to the producer themselves, for example in the use of packaging and other disposable items.

 

The Work Less Party solution:

 

- Immediately pass a by-law for city-wide composting. A proper composting facility would take lawn and yard trimmings, all types of foods, food-contaminated paper, natural fabrics, special compost-ready diapers, and biodegradable takeout containers[2]. 

 

- Support the establishment of ‘refurbishment depots’ and free stores, where broken or outmoded consumer goods (not including electronic equipment) could be repaired and given to those in need. Such depots already exist in places like Yellowknife. These centres would be staffed with volunteers and those with barriers to employment and/or living in supportive housing. Centres of this type should be part of every local community and could provide the means for learning new skills and creative expression, and for obtaining materials at no cost.

 

- Institute a ban on disposable coffee cups and chopsticks, plastic bags, and styrofoam and non-biodegradable takeout containers, to be phased in over time.

 

- Ban the sale of water in plastic bottles. Money saved in collection costs of the empties will to be diverted to installing water fountains across the city.

 

- Pass a by-law that all fast-food containers be made of biodegradable paper and ink.

 

- Provide grants or other financial incentives for local entrepreneurs for start-up companies that sell and distribute biodegradable take-out containers and diapers.

 

- Implement an educational program to teache consumers to leave excess packaging at the stores where they purchase their products.

 

- Vastly increase fines for illegal dumping and install grates over municipal garbage cans to ensure household waste can not be dumped.

 

- Implement a program whereby all garbage must be placed in City of Vancouver clear, recyclable bags, available at cost. Rebates would be available for lower income residents.

 

- Establish a policy of “extended producer responsibility”, one component of which would see the City of Vancouver impose a levy on corporations that produce excessive advertising. The levey would be based on the weight of newspapers and sales flyers and would go towards the cost of pickup and recycling.

 

- Allow non-profit organizations to collect un-sellable and excess food items from stores and restaurants in order to supply community kitchens and produce meals for low-income families and the poor. The organizations would be staffed with volunteers and those with barriers to employment.

 

- The Work Less Party will continue to oppose the building of “waste-to-energy” facilities.

 

ARTS AND CULTURE

 

The Problem: Lack of support for arts and culture.

 

The Solution: Spread it out over the City.

 

In Vancouver, the arts - and artists - are tolerated, rather than accepted as the very lifeblood of the city. If you are an artist or independent arts promoter (without the backing of a corporate budget) you are essentially persona non grata in Vancouver. This situation applies especially to young artists who are negatively impacted by disappearing work spaces or Olympics-driven rent increases. The number of medium-sized live music venues continues to shrink for performers and their potential audiences. Finally, a wide spread view amongst those in the arts community is that City Hall does not offer support for small gallery owners, arts promoters, or festival organizers.

 

The Work Less Party believes that these are only some of the reasons that Vancouver is considered a “No Fun City”. 

 

The Work Less Party solution:

 

- Provide an immediate overhaul of the by-laws that pertain to live performances, event staging and liquor licenses. Past civic governments have allowed a concentration of nightclubs on the Granville strip not only to the general detriment of that community but also creating a strain on police resources. Allowing other entertainment venues throughout the city would add to the vibrancy of our communities and would, additionally, spread economic benefits outside of the City’s core.

     

- Reverse by-laws on the number of musicians who can perform or on bans on dancing in small venues.

 

- Provide a grace period for festivals that include outdoor performances to allow for shows that go overtime (past 11 pm) – neighborhood depending- in order for headliners to complete their sets.

 

- Provide an increase in financial allocation for the arts, with savings to be made in cutting bureaucratic costs and reductions in red tape.

 

- Pass amendments to zoning by-laws to allow for properties to be used and maintained as artist workspaces.

 

- Reduce property taxes for buildings that are kept as artist workspaces.

 

- Promote a more favourable attitude at City Hall towards music promoters, artists, and community event organizers.

 

TRANSIT

 

The Problem: Too many cars, too little mass transit.

 

The Solution: Redistributing transportation options.

 

Many transit users in the City of Vancouver would rate the level of service as woefully inadequate.

Stuffed Skytrain cars and packed buses that pass you by if you are unlucky enough to live near a major transit hub are the norm. We are told that we must collectively reduce our carbon output and that carbon taxes must be implemented as fuel prices skyrocket, but the bitter reality is that  Vancouverites who want alternatives to the use of private cars have limited options. Cycling, a great alternative to car use, is not safe on roads shared with cars. As oil prices increase with a peak oil per capita future looming, and in the face of the overwhelming evidence for catastrophic climate change, the time has come to facilitate transportation options not dependent on the use of private cars.

 

The Work Less Party’s solution:

 

- We strongly oppose transportation policy for the region being dictated by a secretive, non-elected Translink board.

 

- We oppose the construction of further extravagantly expensive transit mega-projects such as the proposed subway line along the Broadway corridor or the Gateway/Hwy 1 expansion. Not only are these mega projects not the answer to transportation in the City of Vancouver, but as the North American economic crisis grows, we will simply be unable to afford such projects.

 

- We would resurrect the former trolley routes along False Creek and the Arbutus corridor.

 

- We are in favour of a Translink system that runs an increased number of buses and Skytrain cars, operating 24 hours per day.

 

- We believe that the City of Vancouver needs its own bus company that will operate within city limits, paid through user fees and by tolls for private vehicles coming into the city.

 

- We would also require tolls for access to intra-city bridges, applied as the increased bus and other mass transit options become available. Knowing that the burden of such tolls will fall most heavily on poorer citizens, we will offer significant rebates based on income.

 

- We believe that City Council must establish a system for licensing pedicabs (bicycle rickshaws) and jitneys (share taxis) operating along main routes.

 

- We would make main East-West and North-South routes in the city mass transit routes on which only buses, jitneys, cabs, and bikes would be allowed to operate. Secondary streets would have car lanes and dedicated bike paths.

 

- We will create a network of connecting bike routes that are made up of entire streets closed off to motorized traffic, and dedicated bike lanes (the width of those currently for cars) on all bridges.

 

- In addition to bike only routes, we will create a system of “valet” lock up stations that, for a nominal fee, will ensure that parked bikes are protected.

 

 

CRIME

 

The Problem: Attacking crime with more police.

 

The Solution: Understanding the nature of crime and how to solve it.

 

When polled, a large segment of Vancouverites say that crime is one of their biggest concerns.

We have the unenviable distinction of being the city with the highest car break-in rate in North America and a 2005 report found that Vancouver had the highest property crime rate in Canada.

Although recent media reports cheerfully claim a decrease in crime in the City of Vancouver, there may actually be a systemic under-reporting. 

 

According to a 2005 study from the Vancouver Board of Trade, property crime is estimated to have cost overall $125 million, with citizens paying for the bulk of this ($103 million). Dave Park, chief economist for the Vancouver Board of Trade, has stated that he believes that property crime accounts for almost 80% of total crime in Vancouver and is largely driven by rampant drug addiction. Drug addiction is clearly interrelated with poverty and homelessness, problems made worse by largely absent social services[3].

 

In spite of a very clear picture about the nature of crime in our city, the “solution” that is routinely promoted by “city leaders” is to expand the police budget and hire more police officers. The current City plan calls for an additional 96 police officers to be hired by 2009.

 

Policing costs already eat up the largest chunk of the municipal budget, coming in at $180 million[4]. Adding more police officers may create a public perception that the situation is improving, but will not actually reduce crime. It is also a myth that police prevent crime. According to some reports, “Repeated analysis has consistently failed to find any connection between the number of police and crime rates”[5]. Rather, increasing, police presence has dispersed the drug trade throughout the City, accompanied by more widespread injection drug use, drug-related crime, and public-disorder.

 

Not all law enforcement officials believe that more policing will solve the problem of drug use and drug-related crime. Organizations such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition recognize that addiction is a medical mental health issue, not an issue for law enforcement. Experts who deal directly with the problems associated with addiction routinely note the same facts: The chronically addicted have not chosen addiction, but are typically victims of abuse, with this abuse almost always beginning at a young age. Addicts need medical assistance to in order to heal, not more police to move them around like “human garbage”[6].

 

The Work Less Party proposes ethically and fiscally-sound plan for crime reduction solutions:

 

-Redefine the mandate of the Vancouver Police department from “law enforcement” to “peace keeping”: the first is now focused on harassing the homeless; the latter would fit into a model of community-based policing in concert with the support of social services and mental health professionals, and drug addiction counsellors. As we transition to a Vancouver made safer by reducing drug-driven property crime, the police will have more time to use their resources to combat violent crime.

 

- Institute a freeze on the hiring of additional police officers, replacing those with on-the-ground mental health care workers to contact and assess the status of homeless persons, addicts, and others in need of assistance. Our ultimate goal would be to reduce the police budget – the largest single line item in Vancouver’s budget – by half. Some of this reduction would come from an overall reduction in the number of police officers by attrition as property crime diminishes.

 

- Declare an amnesty for those suffering from drug addiction and provide them with the medication they need in order to stabilize their lives and behaviours. There are currently only 326 long-term treatment beds in the province of B.C. The Work Less Party will advocate for funding for more such facilities from the provincial and federal governments.

 

- Vancouver’s Mayor and Council must strongly lobby for the re-establishment of funding for additional mental health facilities for Vancouver, as well as for a broad expansion of detox facilities and supportive housing specifically directed towards those in need. These clinics, run by public health officials, would be able to dispense the appropriate drug therapies, free of charge. Without the imperative to find the money for their addiction, those afflicted would have little incentive to resort to property crime or the sex trade. Additionally, making drugs freely available to addicts under controlled conditions will remove the financial incentive that drives the lucrative criminal drug trade with its accompanying gang warfare. 

 

- Convene a diverse, expert panel to address the sex trade with the intention of finding means to ensure the safety, health, and access to social services for sex trade workers.

 

- Provide a real versus a cosmetic approach to the endemic problem of homelessness in Vancouver.

 

-  Recognize that the use of currently illegal drugs is a medical and social problem, rather than one solved by more police or more punitive drug laws. Instead of pursuing the failed policies of the past, we will instead advocate with different levels of government for legalization and strict regulation.

 

 

HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS

 

The Problem: Institutional inertia by all levels of government.

 

The solution: Creating vibrant, dynamic, self-reliant, and democratic communities.

 

We face a growing crisis of homelessness that has increased over 300% since 2003, the year the Olympics were awarded to Vancouver. A high percentage of the homeless are Native people; increasingly, many living on our streets are very young. In spite of promises made by the City, the Province, and the Games organizing committee, practically nothing has been done to alleviate homelessness. In addition to the homeless, the number of working poor has increased exponentially. A 2005 study found 40,000 people at risk of homelessness because they must spend over 50% of their income on housing. Judging by overall increases in the cost of living and the lack of new affordable housing, this number will continue to grow.  Not only is the homeless rate increasing, but there is a lack of affordable housing[7]. The most recent figures from the CMHC, Canada’s national housing agency, show that Metro Vancouver lost 637 suites in 2007 and 1713 in 2006. Not all of those were within the City of Vancouver, but the trend is clear[8].  A 2001 study on the costs of homelessness in BC for the Ministry of Social Development and Economic Security found that it costs more to provide government services to the homeless than to those that are housed, even when one includes the cost of providing social housing: $30, 000 to $40,000 per person for the homeless compared to $22,000 to $25,000 to provide permanent housing and support services[9].

 

The official response to the growing crisis has been abysmal. Current wait list times for placement with BC Housing is seven years. Rather than allocate the funding towards where it is needed- permanent homes- the response to dealing with the hard-to-house has been to either hospitalize or jail them. Not only is this response immoral, it is fiscally foolish: The cost of a bed in the St. Paul’s psychiatric ward is $500 per day, and a bed in a correctional institute is anywhere between $155 and $250 per day. The cost for supportive housing varies from $20 to $38 per day, depending on the level of support needed. The current city government would prefer to ignore the problem, or worse, “warehouse” the homeless to avoid the embarrassment of showing the world the true “legacy” of the 2010 Olympics.

 

According to a September 12, 2008 poll by Ipsos Reid commissioned by the City of Vancouver, the issues found to be of highest concern were homelessness and the lack of affordable housing. This poll comes as no surprise to the Work Less Party. What is a surprise is that our civic leaders are not committed enough to take the decisive actions that this crisis demands. Providing more shelter spaces will not alone solve these problems. Only a concerted effort on the part of our City to address the problem head-on and utilizing all possible tools will make a difference. 

 

The Work Less Party solution:

 

- Instruct City staff to immediately perform a city-wide assessment of sites that have potential for development for low-income, supportive and co-op housing, including a full inventory of City-owned properties.

 

- Increase City spending on the maintenance of existing single room occupancy (SRO) spaces and the construction of new SRO buildings.

 

- Donate, or lease at low cost, municipal land to non-profit organizations to develop and manage supportive and low-income housing.

 

- Provide for the development of integrated communities of all income classes with on site mental health and social workers, drug counselors, and In-site facilities.

 

- Pass by-laws to ensure that all future development projects include a set percentage of units (30%) devoted to the homeless and lower income residents, especially those with families. In concert with this measure, we advocate changing zoning as required to give priority of approval to projects that create non-market, supportive and co-op housing.

 

- Change zoning to allow for multi-family dwellings, secondary suites, and coach houses in districts now zoned ‘single family’.

 

- Loosen unnecessary restrictions on legal secondary rental suites, for example those on ceiling heights.

 

- Pass by-laws preventing strata councils from prohibiting condo owners from renting.

 

- Strictly enforce by-laws requiring the upkeep of low-income housing units. If property owners do not comply willingly, the City will commission the work and send the bill to the property owner.

 

- Allow for the relaxation of by-laws requiring housing units to have parking spaces and reduce the minimum size requirement from 400 sq feet to 350 sq feet.

 

- Pass by-laws designed to discourage real estate speculation and property “flipping”.

 

- In the absence of an implementation other proposals cited here that would help the current housing crisis, we will explore by-laws allowing for the establishment of “squatters’ rights” on empty house and apartments/condominiums that will serve to discourage real estate speculation as well as provide needed living facilities to the poor and homeless.

 

- Expand the model of the Portland Hotel Society to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of mental health professionals to connect the homeless with expanded social services.

 

- Ensure that the City becomes an active advocate for the poor by lobbying the provincial and federal governments to increase the shelter provision of Income Assistance Act to adequately reflect current market conditions[10].

 

- Create a working committee of representatives from government, the building trades, and anti-poverty activists with a goal of forging partnerships to secure funding for non-market, co-op and supportive housing.

 

- Change the role of the current Civil City commissioner to enforce all of the above in order to create a true “Civil City”.

 

 

The History of the Work Less Party.

The Work Less Party was founded in 2005 at municipal and provincial levels and ran candidates in both elections. A federal party has recently been registered and is now running Betty Krawczyk in East Vancouver. For each of these parties, our key proposals concern ways to diminish our society’s reliance on an economy build on endless –and often mindless- consumption and the level of work needed to pay for that consumption: We have become a society that works to consume, with much of what we manufacture winding up in landfill and accelerating the degradation of the planet. We are also a society that tolerates the stark disparities between a super-rich elite and an increasingly urban and rural poor. We have lost our sense of community and interconnectedness with each other and with the planet. Nothing speaks to these realities more clearly than the level of anti-depression drug use amongst the upper and middle classes or drugs of abuse by the poor.

 

As we head into the municipal election, it has become painfully obvious that Vancouver –and Canada -  are woefully unprepared for the harsh economic times ahead. Recent events in the world economy, especially in the United States, have shown just how unstable the entire edifice built on speculative capital markets really is. The real estate “sub-prime” collapse is only one facet of a much larger systemic problem that an increasingly predatory form of capitalism. Vancouver’s citizens may be particularly at risk since our municipal and provincial “leaders” have built a monoculture economy almost solely around real estate speculation associated with the 2010 Olympic Games. At the same time, they and their status quo political parties have ignored other areas that could have made the economy more resilient. The growing financial crisis in the US has already begun to affect average citizens with a significant decline in real estate prices in the last year and the prospect of increasing inflation. The real “Olympic legacy” will be massive public debt. Combined with a global recession -if not depression – the future is almost certain to feature a post-2010 economic meltdown. While we will all be affected, the most profound impacts will harm the most vulnerable in our society: the homeless – a disproportionate number of whom are Native, the elderly, and the working poor, particularly single parents and their children.

 

Not only is Vancouver virtually totally unprepared for disasters of human origin such as economic collapse, social unrest, and climate change, we remain astonishingly vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes.

 

The Work Less Party’s main reason for contesting the upcoming Vancouver municipal election is due to the pressing need for a  party of innovative solutions that represents the interests of citizens not well-served by the developer-backed establishment parties: The latter have remained largely oblivious to the growing and interconnected crises of poverty and homelessness, rampant over-development associated with the 2010 Olympic Games, the lack of creative transportation strategies, and an institutionalized emphasis on profit before people. In all of these areas, we draw a strong distinction between our policies and those of the “centrist” Vision Vancouver and the right-wing NPA. Both of the latter have seemingly abandoned large numbers of Vancouverites to their fate. Both Vision and the NPA merely promote more of the status quo: more development in a car and consumer-driven culture, rather than seeking novel solutions to the urgent problems the city faces.

 

Finding realistic solutions begins with the pressing need for someone to tell Vancouverites the truth. From a clear understanding of the problems, we can begin to move forward to finding new solutions, In this context, we remain the only party that puts public education and debate about the crucial issues facing Vancouverites above any electoral success that might be derived from formulating policy based on opinion polls.

 

Members of our party include people simply concerned about the future –perhaps especially the future of their children -, artists, performers, and numerous social activists whose talents and efforts have spanned a wide variety of causes. We are well known in the community for our fundraising parties, street theatre, and showcases for local performers, but these activities serve dual functions: First, to enhance the dynamic cultural mosaic of Vancouver. Secondly, to identify problems and provide innovative transition solutions that can, at the very least, serve as a catalyst for debate.  We believe we can act as a voice for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the artistic community of Vancouver.

 

Who’s running for office:

 

The Work Less Party candidates for the November 2008 Municipal Election include:

 

Mayor:

 

Betty Krawczyk

Contact: Tel: 604-255-4427; E-mail: betty_krawczyk@shaw.ca.

Betty Krawczyk, who just turned 80, hails originally from southern Louisiana. Betty married early as was the custom of her time and place and had eight children. She also has eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. While raising her brood, Betty studied creative writing through university courses. Active in civil rights, women's rights, and the rights of young men not to have to kill people or be killed in the Viet Nam War she immigrated with her family to Canada in 1966. Divorced, with her children then grown, Betty moved to Clayoquot Sound in 1990. For protesting the clear cutting of the area, and of other forests including the Elaho Valley, the Walbran Valley and lately, Eagleridge Bluffs, Betty has now spent over three and half years in prison. Her efforts at Eagleridge were intended to save a pristine ecosystem from being destroyed for the 2010 Olympics. Writing constantly, Betty has now completed four books plus countless articles and short stories. Her latest book "Open Living Confidential" has just been released. Betty is currently in court still protesting the destruction of Eagleridge Bluffs while trying to make the provincial government accountable for its actions there. To keep in shape Betty walks everywhere, tap dances, and eats lots of hot peppers. She recommends this regime for everybody over three years old.

City Council candidates:

Geri Tramutola

Contact: Tel: 778-840-4374; E-mail: gtram1@gmail.com.

 

Geri has been an activist for over twenty years, primarily in the environmental movement, but also with human rights and social justice issues. Her background includes:
- graduated from the University of Guelph in 1992 with a degree in Physical Geography;
- festival volunteer and community organizer in Vancouver for over ten years;
- part of the organics and natural product industry since 1995; currently employed as a representative for a company that distributes natural healthcare products to naturopathic doctors.

 

Ian Gregson

 

Contact: Tel: 604-320-1911; E-mail: iang62@shaw.ca.

 

Ian is an East Vancouver-based community activist, writer and musician and has worked as a volunteer with a number of diverse community groups ranging from Hastings Sunrise Community Police, Greenpeace, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival. Ian is presently working on establishing a community garden in Adanac Park. Ian continues to lend his skills and services to make the community a better place to be. Ian's stand on the 2010 Olympics includes operating the web site at 2010watch.com, a site dedicated to informing its readers of the various negative impacts of the Vancouver Olympics. As a writer, Ian's better known articles on disability issues have appeared in Larry Flynt's "Hustler". Ian, a three time Paralympian, also published a book on the history of disability sports in Canada. Ian manages his band, "Mr. M and The All Nighters", Canada's only Northern Soul tribute band.

Christopher A. Shaw

 

Contact: Tel: 604-875-4111 (68373); E-mail: cashawlab@gmail.com.

 

Chris Shaw is well known in Vancouver for his anti-Olympic activism and is the current spokesperson for 2010 Watch and the Work Less Party. Chris is also the current policy and media analyst for the Work Less Party, mirroring a role he previously held in the provincial Green Party from 2003 to 2005. He is the author of Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, recently published by New Society Publishers. Chris is a professor of Opthalmology with cross appointments to the Department of Experimental Medicine and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia. His primary research focus is on the causes and early stages of neurological diseases such as ALS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s. Chris has two children, a son, 18, in university and a daughter, 5, now in kindergarten. His concern for their future has dictated his decision to run for City Council.

 

Parks and Recreation Board candidate

 

Ivan Doumenc

 

Contact: Tel: 604-788-9735; E-mail: idoumenc@shaw.ca.

 

Ivan is a community gardener and wilderness advocate. He has learned through experience that environmental protection and social justice are one and the same battle. His personal response to the prevailing culture of consumerist nihilism is to focus on essential human needs – food, water, and community building. He is learning with others to grow crops in every available urban space, and he is working hard with fellow activists to stop river-energy privatization projects. Ivan has decided to campaign with the Work Less Party because this movement understands like no other the strategic importance of decentralized community networks. Ivan pays his rent by working as a software engineer. His wife and 5-year old daughter – both committed outdoor girls – are a permanent source of admiration for him.

 

 

Transitioning to a democratic, sustainable city of interactive communities

 

The Problem:

 

The Earth is a living biosphere whose natural ecosystems, diversity, and interdependencies are essential for the survival of all species. Humanity in its current state of industrial expansion and resource depletion is rapidly destroying this biosphere. Over-consumption, environmental degradation, and unchecked procreation cascade into ever greater destructive cycles whose likely outcome will be the end of civilization. In essence, we are facing a self-imposed destruction of our society. Massive habitat degradation and cataclysmic climate change have already affected thousands of species. Our political leaders at all levels of government, as well as leaders in the private sector, international collaborative bodies, and other social structures have either persistently ignored the crisis or have failed to act in a timely way. Instead they appear disorganized in their responses or paralyzed by inertia. Half measures meant to ease the public's growing concern seem more designed to win votes than create meaningful solutions.

 

The Work Less Party Solution:

 

Only radical social transformation within our civilization, informed by knowledge and observation of planetary changes and combined with a profound spiritual evolution, can prevent further destruction and reverse the downward spiral we face. Some say our time for action to save the biosphere is short; others say there is more time. By either measure, the stakes for our generation's failure to act boldly and decisively may bequeath profound risks of ecological and social bankruptcies to generations yet unborn.

 

The Work Less Party proposes transitional, yet concrete, steps to make Vancouver a truly democratic society and to work for actual sustainability now and in the troubled times ahead by:

 

·        redefining governance structures to foster bottom-up community-based decision making, including:

o       building social capital by increasing community cohesion;

o       fostering arts and culture as primary facets of a vibrant, dynamic community.

·        creating plans for transitioning to localization, including:

o       food security utilizing maximal community garden development;

o       zero waste;

o       alternative sources of energy;

o       zero growth of our currently consumption-based economy.

·        fostering innovative and community-based solutions to crime prevention, including:

o       addressing the root cause of illegal drug use and providing for community-based social/medical solutions;

o       providing community-based solutions to the sex trade;

o       developing better models of community policing and social assistance.

·        addressing the crisis in housing, including proposals for:

o       homelessness

o       rent control;

o       breaking the real estate speculators/developers lock on City housing;

o       enabling squatters’ rights if other methods of housing the poor and homeless fail.

·        developing a rational transportation strategy that is not dependent on cars by:

o       reducing reliance on private cars through tolls as we implement more available mass transit options;

o       providing dedicated bus and bike lanes on all roads and bridges;

o       providing dedicated bike corridors linking all parts of the City.

·        encouraging innovation, including:

o       encouraging alternative educational goals;

o       providing for alternative methods of commerce and finance.

 

 

 

Building government from the grassroots upwards: Community-based governance

 

We believe in strengthening local governance at the most basic level possible, beginning essentially at the family/household with a method of consensus-building problem-solving. We term this process, "emergent shared perspectives". In other words, the same way that a family might decide how to achieve its basic needs for their well-being moves upwards to the next level where each family/household in a block sends one representative to the block. Block representatives go through a similar process to solve the problems within the block, in turn sending representatives to larger groupings. Eventually, the representatives at the highest level decide how to coordinate the needs of the multiple and diverse communities that make up their cities. For some this may seem utopian, but we note that Puerto Allegre, Brazil, uses precisely this method to initiate and control that city's budget and spending priorities. We envision a comprehensive system for Vancouver in which all issues affecting Vancouverites are decided in just such a manner.

 

We believe that local governance structures of this nature would necessarily create an irresistible culture of mutual problem solving that would transform larger levels of decision-making, for example at regional, provincial and federal levels. Indeed, there are neither theoretical nor practical reasons why such should not be true as long as the key principle remains that of inclusion for all those who have a stake in, or may be affected by, the eventual decisions. Different communities, operating within their own traditions and existing conditions, would choose different paths to a sustainable end state.

 

The guiding principles giving structure to such a model of governance are inclusivity, empowerment, mutual problem solving, transparency and feedback at all levels, and community building. The urgent changes that begin at the local level must ultimately be global in scope to insure the survival of the biosphere in order to preserve human civilization. Such as system is less susceptible to corruption or influence peddling as it requires the “buy in” of each level of decision making.

 

We believe that a community-based governance model is best suited to solve some of Vancouver's most pressing problems which include the illegal drug trade and the crime it engenders, the sex trade, and institutional poverty for Native and non-Native residents alike. Such issues defy conventional political solutions, yet the innovative and truly democratic governance structure described here provides a core strategy to address the problems plaguing Vancouver's neglected Downtown Eastside. In this model of governance, the role of the mayor and councilors is not to dictate solutions, but to facilitate community initiatives and decisions, to help define available resources, and to liaise between the potentially competing goals of various of the City’s many communities. Only true local governance can provide the empowerment that will lead to the establishment of bottom-up solutions rather than a top-down decision making.

 

 

Localization

 

The biosphere is made up of millions of local ecosystems, all under threat from the convergent global crises of climate change, per capita peak oil, and economic instability. Enticed by economic globalization, cities and local communities have surrendered their ability to meet their own essential needs of clean water, unpolluted food, energy production, sustainable manufacturing, universal health care, effective and affordable transportation, as well as essential social services and other systems of care. Communities must now rebuild these capacities and develop resilience to the ongoing fluctuations in global/national economies and uncertain currencies and energy supplies. The process by which such sustainable resiliency arises is through a deliberate policy of "localization". The process involves transforming existing communities, such as the City of Vancouver, into healthy self-reliant entities complete with localized supply chains for essential resources in order to safeguard the long-range safety of our families, our communities, and all of the inhabitants of our city.

 

Those areas that a localization strategy can address include: food security, zero growth, zero waste, and dealing with peak per capita oil. Food security (see accompanying section) can, in part, be dealt with by the active promotion of neighborhood and community gardens, using all available land, including in some cases park land and land now used as streets for private cars. Zero growth recognizes that no system, human or otherwise, can grow indefinitely and that for us all to survive, there must be caps on the growth of our economy and our ecological footprint. Zero waste is part of the means by which we achieve zero growth. Finally, to find means to address energy needs, we have to recognize that per capita peak oil is upon us and that the age of oil as a source of cheap energy is over. Localization implies finding other less polluting sources of energy including small hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, and others.

 

Localization also recognizes that local communities exist in a wider context.While broad solutions to save the biosphere must arise first at local levels, essential issues involving water, food, transportation, biodiversity, and others must be extrapolated from local to global levels if we hope to be part of the transformation of human civilization. By way of example, health equity is a right of all peoples. If one city or region has found solutions through medicines, techniques, or lifestyle changes affecting health conditions, the information exchange networks of local communities can be used to transmit and deliver such solutions more widely in an actively pursued process of mutual aid.

 

Innovation

 

Novel Technologies: We will soon be utterly dependent on a variety of still-emerging novel technologies if we are to protect the biosphere and the place of human civilization on Earth. The sooner these solutions are acted upon, the greater the chance of alleviating the worst of the problems to come. The necessary changes to achieve transition may take various forms reaching back to our past as well as forward to our future. The first honours the traditions and wisdom of indigenous peoples who lived for generations at peace with the Earth. The latter may take the form of identifying and developing new energy sources by freeing scientific inquiry and exploration. These innovations, combined with new forms of democratic grassroots-based governance and a localization perspective can provide the impetus for the rebirth of our communities and cities.

 

Education: Education in our present world- global to local- is inexorably linked to instilling in youth an acceptance of their place within hierarchical structures and the conventional economics of environmental destruction. The purpose of true education should be to create independent human beings able to devise novel solutions for unique local as well as interrelated world-wide problems. The challenges of re-empowering governing structures, localization, and innovation can only be solved in the future by students raised in an educational system built on principles dictated by the interdependencies amongst human beings and the Earth.

 

Banking and Finance: A primary disease impacting the sustainability of the Earth is the uncontrolled growth of an out-of-control consumer culture that demands limitless resources while producing endless waste. Economies that depend upon continued exponential exploitation of the Earth are inherently unsustainable. Future societies will be required to adopt steady state economies based on the concept of zero growth that redefine acts between buyer and seller, and supply greater information and incentives for all involved in supply chains and product life cycle choices.

 

Money increasingly obscures social and environmental values and diminishes the potential for human fairness and basic justice. Money accumulating in the hands of fewer people subjugates the rest, pushing many to the extremes of dire poverty. Vancouver is rapidly becoming a gentrified city of the wealthy that live in self-imposed terror of legions of the homeless. Money and the banking and financial system must be radically transformed through innovation and transparency. Within Vancouver, we see a role for alternative models of money, banking, and credit designed to work hand-in-hand with true community-based governance. Such novel financial structures would allow newly empowered populations within our city, such as those in the Downtown Eastside, to finally take full control of their destiny in mutual cooperation with the other communities of this city.

 

 

Food security and community gardens applied to Vancouver

 

As already noted in other sections of this document, Vancouver faces a pressing problem of providing food security. In brief, Vancouver must become a “Zero Mile Diet” city in the very near future. This is not just a cute slogan, but a strategic goal in a new world defined by increasing scarcity that will demand greater local self-reliance. The consumerist extravaganza of past generations is coming to an end and our food policy must reflect this new reality. There are three main directions that the City of Vancouver can, and must, take to ensure food security:

 

Reclaim urban wasteland: In Vancouver, land can be made available everywhere to grow gardens. The City must implement a host of regulatory by-laws and incentive measures to reclaim land for this purpose.These measures include:

 

- Industrial “brownfields” or unused industrial land, and surplus commercial land such as big box retail, warehouses, or parking lots/spaces should be turned over to community gardens;

 

- Residential unproductive land such as lawns, balconies, solariums, rooftops, etc. will also be included as garden areas.

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Declare war on red tape and free gardens from the plague of the municipal bureaucracy: Regulatory obstacles to community gardening are so pervasive that the only practical way to start a city garden today is to do it illegally. Such existing policies discourages resourceful, productive citizens from turning Vancouver into a City of Gardens and achieving our goal of food self-reliance.

 

Some of the means to do so might include:

 

- “Guerrilla” gardening will be encouraged by City Council if the other measures proposed here are not adopted;

 

- The regulations for creating small greenhouses and sheds must be streamlined;

 

- Home and mortgage insurance policies should be rewritten to allow for balcony, rooftop, and indoor gardens;

 

- Gardening costs should be made tax deductible;

 

- Gardeners should be free to sell the product of their work on local markets;

 

- The City should levy a tax on imported food and chain stores to fund community garden initiatives.

 

Empower citizen gardeners: Empowerment of various communities and persons is key to the goal of establishing community gardens for food security. In this empowerment process, the City's role will mostly be hands-off: It will provide considerable logistical, regulatory, and financial support to community garden initiatives but citizens will take the lead on projects. Some ideas include:

 

- Reestablish the lost link between children and nature through urban agriculture, in the process empowering youth by giving them meaningful roles in the establishment and running of community gardens;

 

- Educate adults about the multiple benefits of low-meat diets;

 

- Empower the poor and the homeless by letting them grow their own food and by entrusting them with the care of some of our public spaces;

 

- Provide people with a viable alternative to the work-consume-debt paradigm;

 

- Use community gardening to grow communities.

 

Other initiatives:

 

- The name of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation will be changed to Vancouver Board of Parks, Gardens, and Recreation to signal a fundamental policy shift based around gardens;

 

- In addition to community gardening, the City will give a decisive boost to indoor agriculture. The Lower Mainland, Vancouver's bread basket, is choking. It is time to rationalize our agriculture by bringing it indoors whenever possible. Vancouver is one of the world's most advanced cities in the world for innovative agricultural techniques such as hydroponics and aeroponics (due, in part to clandestine grow-ops). It is time to tap into that know-how;

 

- The legalization of marijuana could free technology, skills and capital that could be redirected toward large scale indoor agriculture.