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Topic: vancouver civic elections (Read 270 times)

east
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vancouver civic elections
« on: Nov 17^th, 2002, 12:55pm »

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for those of you who know of my passion for the downtown eastside of vancouver, i have been crossing all of my fingers for this election...larry campbell is a leader in the four pillar approach to the downtown eastside, is in favour of harm reduction (including safe injection sites and possible legalization and drug administration) and has the experience of having been the chief coroner of bc...seeing the overdoses, the death rates increase, how rehab only works for 3 in 100! and as a result of some of this, a television show was created about his work life ~ da vinci's inquest. his party, COPE, took vancouver last night in a landslide. i am sooooooo happy that i cry thinking about it...finally something will be done about my beloved downtown eastside...ramble, ramble, in fact, this was SUCH a touchy election campaign that the NEW YORK TIMES came to cover it... in fact, we went from a pathetic 33% of the population vote to 50%...this is partially thanks to our premier, also a campbell, who is not liked at the moment. oh and MY church has hosted two mock safe injection sites and said we would do it illegally if the city did not come through...such shit disturbers...Now you know where i get it from...

Campbell wins big in Vancouver

By JANE ARMSTRONG
Globe and Mail Update

Vancouver — Former coroner Larry Campbell has won a landslide victory in Vancouver, taking the mayor's chair from an opponent whose victory was all but assured before the straight-talking, ex-Mountie entered the race.

Mr. Campbell's victory was decisive; as of 10 p.m. PST, he took more than 80,000 votes compared to slightly more than 41,000 for Jennifer Clarke, whose establishment Non-Partisan Association, which has dominated city politics for more than six decades was all but wiped out on council.

Surrounded by a crowd of cheering supporters at the Vancouver Public Library, Mr. Campbell paid tribute to Ms. Clarke and tried to mend fences from a campaign that grew nasty and personal in its waning days.

"Jennifer did this while raising children and carrying on her home and this is an incredibly difficult thing to do," said Mr. Campbell, whose career inspired the CBC TV series Da Vinci's Inquest.

"Some things were said on all sides that we should recognize as being done in the heat of battle. It's now time for all of us to come together."

Mr. Campbell was backed by the Coalition of Progressive Electors, a left-of-centre party that has been shut out of power at city hall since its inception in the 1960s.

But COPE's victory was as decisive as Mr. Campbell's; eight of 10 city council seats were won by COPE candidates, who also swept the park and school boards.

Mr. Campbell entered the race vowing to help the drug addicts of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. A cornerstone of his campaign was a promise to set up so-called safe injection sites where addicts can shoot up in a clean, supervised setting.

Last night, Mr. Campbell vowed to establish such a site in Vancouver, saying he's set a deadline for early in the new year.

"You will see a changed city," Mr. Campbell said.

"You will see a government that listens to the people and responds to them. We are not always going to be right and we will be the first to step forward and admit it.

"But we are going to change things and sometimes mistakes happen."

In an interview shortly after the polls closed, Mr. Campbell said he sensed that Vancouver voters were angry at how the old-guard NPA had allowed city problems — such as the decline of the drug-plagued Downtown Eastside and the city's poor transit — to worsen.

"The public was outraged that nothing had been done in the Downtown Eastside," Mr. Campbell said, as he watched a hockey game in a coffee shop across from the library where supporters were gathering.

"If this was such a great party. If Ms. Clarke was so great, why, from 1992 to 2002 did the problem get so bad.

"How do you go from having no open drug market to a huge open drug market."

In the last days of the campaign, the increasingly desperate NPA launched a series of negative ads against COPE linking the party to the former provincial NDP government. Mr. Campbell said those ads backfired.

« Last Edit: Nov 17^th, 2002, 1:09pm by east »

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east
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Re: vancouver civic elections
« Reply #1 on: Nov 17^th, 2002, 1:07pm »

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from the new york times, november 15th...

A Would-Be Mayor's Mission: 'Safe Injection Sites'
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

Robert J. Galbraith for The New York Times
The mayoral candidate Larry Campbell walks downtown Vancouver in his trademark felt fedora.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 14 — Larry Campbell, a former policeman and the leading mayoral candidate, was campaigning down his old beat on West Hastings Street the other night when a man in a denim jacket and with a straggly goatee gestured to him. He might have been a prospective voter, but he had something other than politics on his mind.

"Bud?" the man said, parlance for marijuana among the street dealers in the Downtown Eastside section of Vancouver.

Mr. Campbell shook the dealer off and looked for other voters to greet in a neighborhood where drugs, prostitution and homelessness have become an eyesore and scourge in recent years. "On this street you get anything you want," he said, shaking his head. "Weed is the least offense."

In ways big and small, illegal drugs are dominating the hottest Vancouver mayoral race in a generation. Recent polls show that Mr. Campbell has a big lead in Saturday's election over Jennifer Clarke, a city councilor who is the candidate of the center-right Nonpartisan Association. The party has held the mayoralty for the last 16 years and has dominated city politics for most of the last six decades.

The issue that has inflamed the campaign is whether Vancouver should follow Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Sydney in creating "safe injection sites." In such indoor areas, intravenous heroin users would be able to inject drugs bought elsewhere without the threat of arrest under the supervision of public health care workers who would offer them safe needles and counseling to change their lives.

Health Canada, the chief federal health agency, is considering sanctioning such sites around the country. Vancouver is expected to be the first to try the idea, especially if Mr. Campbell wins. He wants to start the program within two weeks of taking office next month.

Ms. Clarke says that she is ready to study the idea, but that it would need approval from the federal authorities and local communities.

Mr. Campbell is running on the ticket of the Coalition of Progressive Electors, or COPE, an association of left-wing groups with heavy union support. He campaigns in a black trench coat and a green fedora tilted just so, giving him the look of a streetwise, no-nonsense detective who knows how to deal with crime.

That image has been burnished by the popular Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television series "Da Vinci's Inquest," a show about a tough Scotch-drinking coroner loosely based on Mr. Campbell's other former career as chief coroner of British Columbia. Mr. Campbell is an adviser and occasional scriptwriter for the show, whose star and main character share the Campbell name.

Mr. Campbell's early campaign buttons said "Mayor Da Vinci."

"It's art resembling life," Mr. Campbell suggested.

Ms. Clarke and Mr. Campbell agree on many things. Both want more buses and better streetcar service. Both favor new parks and improved day care services. Both want to put more police officers on the street.

Their conflict is over drugs. As a former coroner, Mr. Campbell rattles off the statistic that 1,200 addicts have died in Vancouver over the last 10 years, mostly of disease and overdoses. As a former member of the police drug squad, he speaks graphically of the ways addicts prepare and inject their heroin.

"Now the addict goes to an alley to find a needle that is dirty and may have blood on it and then he sucks up water from a puddle which could have urine in it or rat feces," he said in an interview in his downtown headquarters. "We're saying, `Make it safe and bring these people in contact with health professionals.' We will have detox and treatment."

He said addiction must be treated as a disease, not a crime.

What to do about the Downtown Eastside has become the major issue in Vancouver because in recent years heroin and crack users have been held responsible for the highest property crime rate of any city in Canada. As a port, Vancouver is an entry place for drugs from Asia. With a relatively mild climate that makes street living less uncomfortable than in colder cities, it attracts addicts and homeless people from all over Canada.

Business leaders are worried that Vancouver's reputation for being a center of drug use could hurt its bid to play host to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Municipal politics here is still a civil affair in which candidates applaud each other between retorts at public debates. But the subject of "safe injection sites" produces real sparks.

"Mr. Campbell believes that he will put in safe injection sites by Jan. 1, whether it's legal or not and whether or not there is community consensus, and there certainly would not be time for public consultation," Ms. Clarke said in a radio debate this week. Mr. Campbell shot back: "The drug addiction problem took off the last 10 years while Ms. Clarke was in office. Rather than study this problem yet again, COPE is actually committed to doing something about this problem now."

Ms. Clarke has been hampered by the refusal of Mayor Philip Owen, who is not running, to support her, in part because of their own disputes over drug policy. Hoping to make inroads in the last days, she has begun advertisements linking Mr. Campbell to a failed former provincial leftist government. In an interview, she expressed frustration that she was having trouble dispelling Mr. Campbell's television image.

"It's like Martin Sheen running for president," she said with a sigh, "and voters assuming that Martin Sheen would respond as president the way the television character does" on the hit show "West Wing."

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Re: vancouver civic elections
« Reply #2 on: Nov 18^th, 2002, 11:55am »

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~ in the new york times again! ~

Vancouver Election Sweep
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

VANCOUVER, British Colombia, Nov. 17 — Larry Campbell, a former police officer and coroner who has advocated safe injection centers for drug addicts, won a strong victory on Saturday in the contest for mayor.

All candidates who ran for his party, the Coalition of Progressive Electors, won, taking a majority in the Vancouver City Council.

Mr. Campbell defeated Jennifer Clarke, a longtime city councilor from the Non-Partisan Association.

Health Canada, the chief federal health agency, is considering approving injection centers across the country. Vancouver is expected to be the first to try the idea. Mr. Campbell has said he wants to start the program within two weeks of taking office next month.

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