A guide and an update on local all-candidates meetings

What happened: The campaign for two city council seats is in full swing, as you know if you’re a frequent Lookout reader. What you may not be filled in on is the various meetings around the city where candidates gather to speak directly with voters and answer audience questions in a panel format.

Background: These all-candidates meetings (a misnomer, but we’ll get to that later) are organized by neighbourhood groups and community centres. These groups are also responsible for advertising their events, without help from institutions like the city. That can make awareness of these various events a challenge – with the exception of the diligent folks at City Hall Watch, we hadn’t seen any comprehensive lists of when and where these meetings are happening. 

The details: Not to fret, we’ve got you covered with the nuts and bolts of these opportunities for democratic engagement:

Thursday, March 20, 6:30 pm at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church (2nd floor) on 12th and Hemlock. Organized by the Fairview/South Granville Action Committee 

Wednesday, March 26, 6:30 pm at the West End Community Centre (Auditorium), organized by WECC.

Tuesday, April 1, 7 pm at the Kerrisdale Community Centre (Auditorium), organized by KCC.

• The Kitsilano and West Point Grey Community Centre Associations were planning to co-sponsor a meeting but decided to cancel after only two candidates said they could attend. 

Meeting on the Drive: On Monday, Vancity Lookout visited one of these all-candidate meetings in the Britannia complex beside Grandview Park. 

The format included about half an hour of roundtable discussion, with each candidate given their own table where attendees could sit and ask questions. That was followed by a panel discussion for about an hour and a half, where everyone got to hear candidate responses to  various questions from speakers. 

• The candidates from TEAM, COPE, OneCity, the Greens, and two Independents were all in attendance. 

Highlights and notes: The meeting at Brittania was quite well-attended, with a room full of people keen to question the candidates. 

• COPE’s Sean Orr and OneCity’s Lucy Maloney drew the most notable crowds during the roundtable discussion, while TEAM’s Theodore Abbott appeared comfortable and confident during the debate with lots of vocal crowd support in his home neighbourhood. 

Speakers brought up issues like the city’s role in combatting climate change, recent council direction to consider deferring charges owed to the city by developers for new buildings, tree cutting in Stanley Park, and the controversial high-rise development being proposed at the Safeway site next to the Commercial-Broadway SkyTrain station.

The atmosphere was understandably charged, with some attendees (including RollerGirl, who is running as an Independent) interrupting candidates by calling out their comments. 

• A few audience members began booing when Maloney said she would vote in favour of rezoning to allow the Safeway site development, which Orr asked them to stop. “We’re not at a hockey game here,” he said. 

Part of running for council is saying unpopular things, Maloney said. Rielly and Orr also said they would vote to rezone the site with contingencies, while Hardwick and Abbott said they would vote against it. 

• “People say they’ll just build it somewhere else, I say let them,” Abbott said of the development in his figurative backyard, getting a big cheer from the audience.   

Not all candidates: ABC’s candidates, Jaime Stein and Ralph Kaisers, were notably absent, having declined the organizer’s invitation to take part in the event. 

• This has been a theme, as the majority party’s candidates have declined to attend the three previous candidate meetings. Vancity Lookout has learned Stein and Kaisers declined invitations to the West End meeting, while CTV reported they also declined to attend the event in Kerrisdale. 

When reached for comment on Monday, an ABC spokesperson passed on ABC President Stephen Molnar’s statement from last week saying the candidates “have been unavailable to attend due to prior commitments.” The spokesperson declined to answer if Stein and Kaisers would attend any of the meetings over the next two weeks. 

Despite Molnar’s statement that ABC’s candidates “remain fully committed to engaging with the community in as many ways as possible,” it seems they won’t be attending these open forums, choosing to stick to private meetings with various community groups and stakeholders instead.    

What it means: Lookout managing editor Geoff jumping in here. In many elections, the political parties or candidates that have a lead play it safe, declining interviews or events where they could face criticism. This happened in Ontario, and more specifically Ottawa, where our Lookout colleague Charlie was unable to sit down with most Progressive Conservative candidates for an interview. Many also did not attend all-candidate meetings. 

• While ABC indicated their candidates were too busy to attend, this can also be read as a strategic play. By not attending this type of public event, they may be seeking to play it safe – avoiding hard questions and potential confrontations about their party’s record in government. If it is strategic, they’ve decided that could be more damaging than the criticism they’re receiving from other candidates for not attending.