Leaderless Vancouver

Every year for a decade or more, Vancouver has sat at the top, or close to the top, of the annual lists of Most Liveable Cities, Best Cities In The World, Most Favoured Business Destination -- you know the kind of thing.  And it would be churlish of me to disagree;  I adore it here and couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

That being said, we have to wonder why we get lumbered with such a bad lot as municipal leaders.

This coming Saturday we have our Civic Elections and, for mayor, we have a choice between a self-serving and arrogant "left winger" who helped destroy the only true left-wing party the city has seen since the war, and a right-leaning politico who has been described as "crazy" and who has sat on Council for 12 years doing nothing.

In the last election, the voters chose Larry Campbell, a guy with an impressive and well-known resume as a drug cop and then city coroner.  It helped that Larry was the inspiration for the lead character in "Da Vinci's Inquest", a very popular Canadian TV drama.  Campbell was the candidate for  COPE, the leftwing party.  During his term, he helped destroy that party but, frankly, did nothing else of consequence that I can recall  (he will claim credit for the safe injection site, but that was all the work of Philip Owen the previous mayor).

Thank God we have tremendous public servants in the municpal offices.  It is they and not our politicians who have allowed Vancouver to grow to major status without losing the things that make it so livable.  It is because of them that downtown is a mix of residential and commerical (with the residential in the ascendancy).  It is because of them that we have a road system that works despite the fact that Vancouver is the only major metropolitan area in North Amnerica without a highway running through it.  It is because of them that we have a dozen or more vibrant and varied neighbourhoods.  We don't need any of the politicians.

This is a good time to be an anarchist.