As I mentioned recently, Metro Vancouver is renewing it’s Regional Growth Strategy, and just started it’s first round of community meetings. I attended the Vancouver one at the VPL the other night, and while there was no Derek Corrigan, boasting about the detriments of the Gateway Program (*cough* at the Burnaby meeting *cough*), there did happen to be one Mr. Peter Ladner, dropping hints throughout the night about the inner politics of Metro Vancouver, TransLink, and the provincial government. But before I get into that, let me pass on a few of my notes about the night.

There was a full house at the meeting, probably at least a good 100 people, all fitting nicely inside the Alice McKay room at the Central Branch. As you would expect, almost everyone there was from Vancouver, and I noticed a very good mix of people - old, middle aged, young… blue collar, white collar, no collar… etc.

They started off with a short presentation, summarizing what was in the discussion guide: climate change changes everything, moving from livability to sustainability, housing prices, an incomplete transit system, etc. From there, people split up to head to one of 5 groups, corresponding with the proposed five new goals:

  1. Accommodate growth in a sustainable and compact metropolitan structure
  2. Offer diverse and affordable housing choices
  3. Support and strengthen a diverse regional economy
  4. Protect and enhance the region’s natural assets
  5. Create a sustainable regional transportation system

Not quite surprisingly, transportation attracted the most people, with almost 50 in total. The second most popular with about 25 people was goal #1; compact growth. The third was housing choice, while the environment (#4) and the economy (#3) were about even for fourth/fifth place. Interestingly enough, I did notice that the people in each group were representative of their goal - i.e. the housing group (#2) had mostly immigrants and middle income looking people; the economy group (#3) had the most business people. Transportation however also attracted the most diverse group of the night.

I wasn’t specifically in one group, as I floated around from one to another, catching snippets of the discussions. I must admit though, that just the atmosphere in the place wasn’t particularly conducive to *actual* conversation. What I mean by that is in each group it was typically the usual suspects talking each time, while most of the others did nothing but listen. I would’ve improved the situation by maybe having smaller groups, and having the facilitators poke and prod others to speak up.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Peter Ladner was on hand all night, both as the rep for the City of Vancouver and as Vice Chair of the Metro Vancouver board. He answered a number of questions, and while he too floated around the room during the discussions, he was quite intent on listening to the transportation group for most of that time. When he answered a few questions, it was quite clear that he was frustrated at Bill 43, and one issue in particular about that new legislation: that TransLink will no longer have to align it’s plans with Metro Vancouver’s land use strategy, which, as anybody would understand, is disconcerting. Land-use and transportation are intrinsically intertwined, and the two organizations *need* to work closely together to move the region forward. He also mentioned a bit about the province butting in on regional plans (aka: the Gateway Program), and trying to find a way to get all these different organizations and governments, along with the respective communities, to find some common ground.

Afterwards, there was a group wide Q&A, that didn’t produce many results, as few really spoke. That said, the one major feel I got from the meeting, which Peter Ladner summed up towards the end to make it quite clear to everyone, that the largest decision people had to make was how much control they wanted a regional government to have. Many of the problems that are currently happening have to do with the lack of power Metro Vancouver has to mandate the LRSP, and it seemed like most people, in Vancouver at least, thought that the board needed new weight and influence on the political scene.

More pictures available on my Flickr

Sphere: Related Content