Viewpoint Vancouver

With 10 days counting down to Election Day, Gordon Price pulls in ex-NPA-Council-crony-turned-urban-food-security-activist-and-all-around-mensch Peter Ladner for a frank talk on what is up with this wacky election. With 58 candidates for Vancouver City Council and 10 registered parties in the running, how can we make sense of it all?Among the many chewy topics on the table, Gord and Peter consider: can anyone entice the centre Left to ride to a City Hall majority—and do these labels still hav...

In this very special episode, author Colin Stein unveils an epic portrait of our place and time: Vanbikes: Vancouver's Bicycle People and the Fight for Transportation Change, 1986-2011 (An Oral History). In conversation with Gordon and a room full of fans, he relates how the bicycle people transformed Vancouver, and how Vancouver transformed Colin Stein.Related as a series of discussions and anecdotes and packed with photos and memorabilia, Vanbikes tells of culture change from the insid...

Welcome to a special dispatch from Gordon Price, checking in from Expo 2022 in Dubai. (With our apologies for the sound quality. At a place like Expo, it was the quietest place he could find.)One of the best things about a world’s fair—after you’ve visited the pavilions, tasted the food, listened to the music —is oddly, also one of the worst things: standing in lines. Because it is in those lineups where you’re likely to engage with people from other places in way you never otherw...

Welcome to Episode Three of Viewpoint Vancouver's election podcast feature: Three Quick Questions. Where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.This time up, Gord turns the political spotlight on John Coupar, running as the NPA's candidate for Mayor of the City of Vancouver. Listen in on John's long behind-the-scenes family history with the Vancouver Park Board, an...

Listen in for Episode Two of Viewpoint Vancouver's election podcast feature: Three Quick Questions. Where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.This time up, Gord puts it to Ken Sim, running for Mayor of City of Vancouver with A Better City. For more about Ken check out kensim.ca.*********************************************The Viewpoint Podcast is a production of Viewp...

The great “BurnaBOOM” started off in the ‘50s, as Willingdon Heights came to model the suburban ideal: a gridded neighborhood of wide streets, tidy flower gardens, and modest single-family bungalows. To some extent, it is still that—but so much more.Lee-Ann Garnett, Burnaby’s Deputy Director of Planning and Building, tells the evolving story of Burnaby housing through the eyes of Albert and Clara—an archetypal blue-collar couple who leave the prairies after the war, to settle in Burnaby and l...

Join Viewpoint Vancouver for a quickie! Introducing our new Election feature: Three Quick Questions, where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.First up in the series: Mark Marissen, running for Mayor of City of Vancouver with Progress Vancouver. What has Amsterdam got that Vancouver doesn't, creating a safer and more vibrant downtown? Mark has an idea.For more of Mark...

The City of North Van is no bedroom community. With sexy projects like the Shipyards, the Polygon Art Gallery, and new Lonsdale patios and covered seating, North Van is quickly becoming a destination city. In fact, the City has the lowest percentage of single-family homes of any Greater Vancouver municipality. The buzz now is all about market rentals, and affordable housing. First-term City of North Vancouver Councillor Tony Valente talks to Gordon about housing challenges, rapid buses, ...

Big news for the Region! Translink has just unveiled Transport 2050: its blueprint for the next 30 years of regional mobility. Gordon talks to Translink Manager of Policy Development Eve Hou about the evolution of this important document, and what Translink sees coming down the long-range pipes. Will we have a future of integrated mobility: transit pass, car-share, and share-bike, all in one handy package? Translink calls it “mobility as a service”. The acronym is ACES — automated, conne...

All countries have distinctive urban regions, but Canadian cities especially differ from one another in culture, structure, and history. SFU prof Anthony Perl’s new book Big Moves: Global Agendas, Local Aspirations, and Urban Mobility in Canada (co-authored with Matt Hern and Jeffrey R. Kenworthy) dissects how Canada's three largest urban regions have been shaped by the interplay of globalized imperatives, aspirations, activism, investment, and local development initiatives. In this epi...

An OWG (Old White Guy) enlists the aid of a YBG (Young Brown Guy) in unpacking modern socio-political vocabulary.Can white people be 'racialized'? Is equity of opportunity the same as equity of outcome? What is privilege, really? Who has it now, and where does the balance tip? And, moreover: what does it really take, to be Gord’s perfect gym buddy? Join us for a rambling and entertaining conversation as Mo Amir of popular culture podcast This is VANCOLOUR joins Gordon Price for a trip th...

Throughout her 33-year career, Judy Graves was the public face of City Hall to those living in Vancouver's streets and shelters. She knew who they were, what they needed, and how to get a roof over their heads. She reached out to them, often in the late hours of the night. She knew the ins-and-outs of City Hall, especially the ins, and who did what. She knew how to get the right kind of help to the people who needed it.While her successes were measured by the individuals she helped day to day...

A tale of two city-makers — one, a son of the working poor, who showed an early knack for creation and collaboration, in part through the use of polyhedral dice; the other, a world-renowned urban planner, with a Twitter following as large as the populations of some of the cities he now calls clients.The two are, of course, the same man. Brent Toderian arrived in Vancouver in 2006 as the new Director of Planning for the City of Vancouver, stepping into the role jointly held by Larry Beasley an...

It was 2009, Vancouver was about to become the largest metro region to host a winter Olympic Games, and the city faced a challenge of similarly grandiose proportions — how to accommodate a 30% increase in downtown transportation trips alongside a 30% reduction in road network capacity, thanks to Games-related operations.For Lon LaClaire, a transportation planning engineer at that fraught moment in the city’s history, it was an experiment that would prove to be the ultimate litmus test of the ...

Every child is full of questions. And while the science is fuzzy, it seems that children who ask questions about the future — not how things work today, but how they could work better tomorrow — tend to make great planners.Michael Gordon was one of those children. And his legacy as one of the most important planners of Vancouver’s Golden Age (thank you, Larry Beasley) has been built by finding answers to the most difficult of questions about the growth of inner cities. Namely, is it possible ...

There’s nothing like listening to a gifted speaker riff on culture and politics; especially when the riffing is concise, with a judicious use of words, and an almost complete absence of hyperbole or bafflegab.Sure, that sounds like Peter Ladner. But in this edition of Price Talks torch-passing, it also describes Vivienne Zhang, the successor to Ladner’s predecessor.Zhang is a UBC grad, currently en route to the Paris Institute of Political Studies (‘Sciences Po‘) to begin her Masters in inter...

According to Vancouver Green Party councillor Pete Fry, consultation won’t build us the city of the future.“Where we’re going, we don’t need sticky notes on a wall,” he said (kind of). To Fry, consultation simply means, ‘the plan has already been written’ — not the right approach for the city-wide plan. Ironically, it was a lack of consultation that almost resulted in a freeway blowing through his Strathcona neighbourhood, but that’s a story for another time.He wants co-creation. Neighbourhoo...

The Price Talks team hosted its first public podcast recording, held in front of a live library audience in the District of North Vancouver on June 26, 2019.We’ve lobbed quite a bit of criticism at the North Shore generally over the past eight months, regarding recent decisions about housing, transportation and the public realm, but felt it was time to actually hear from residents.Joining Gord for the discussion were:Dominica Babicki, formerly Energy Manager with the District, currently compl...

There’s no two ways about it — TransLink, Metro Vancouver’s transit authority, is #1 in North America for year-over-year transit ridership growth. Seattle’s King County Transit is #2. And Kevin Desmond has led them both.Desmond, now in his 4th year at the TransLink helm, didn’t emerge as a transit planning professional as a result of education, nepotism, or some cultish, hippie-era, preternatural NUMTOT trip (though, thanks to Gord, he’s now officially hip to the ELMTOT jive).No, Desmond came...

More bus routes with greater capacity. Ground level retail in proximity to low-rise residential buildings. Communities designed with walking, cycling, and integrated multi-modal mobility in mind. And yes, rapid transit.Surrey and Langley are two obvious examples of cities south of the Fraser taking slow, but steady and at times bold, steps towards the future, thanks in no small part to the work done by people like Paul Lee and Nathan Pachal.In this second edition of our “Predecessor/Successor...

In 2015, the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) undertook a strategic planning process that might have invited a bit of cynicism — give a fancy name and lengthy timeline to a stock-in-trade exercise, and call it transformative.That exercise, however, was Re-Imagine Downtown Vancouver, and it has already proven to be anything but typical. For one, it’s a 25-year legacy ‘vision’ project laid upon a foundation of rigorous research and public engagement. For another, it i...

“A lot of people thought we were wildly pessimistic as to the speed with which we were facing this crisis. Turned out we were wildly optimistic.This is happening faster than those of us who started getting interested in it 30 years ago could possibly have conceived.”In recognition of the 30 year anniversary of Clouds of Change, the 1989 report from the City of Vancouver’s Task Force on Atmospheric Change, Gord speaks with a key influencers for his originating motion to strike the task force, ...

“There are places we love, and places we hate…at a certain point, we made it illegal to make the places we love anymore, and we were only allowed to make the places we hate.”So says Jeff Speck, one of North America’s top urban designers, and a leader of the new urbanism movement, in a recent visit — his first — to Vancouver.As co-author of 2010’s Suburban Nation with his mentors Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (of architecture and town planning firm DPZ Partners), Speck reached a new...

You might be a fan of Vancouver Councillor Michael Wiebe’s previous work with the Park Board, including the Jericho Lands Agreement, the Biodiversity Strategy, and warming shelters.Or maybe you prefer his first big hit, as co-owner of eight 1/2, the well-regarded Mt. Pleasant restaurant.You may even appreciate his 10 years as Park Board staff, or his debut in administrative management in the provincial government.But if you’re invested in Vancouver’s new era of power and politics, you may onl...

It’s not Vancouver, but it sounds like the Vancouver we want to be: multi-family residential buildings located close to the urban centre. Generously spaced laneways and semi-private lots for kids to play. Sufficient access to high storefronts, services and other amenities, in ever-expanding concentric circles of community, neighbourhood, and city.It’s Heliopolis — once a suburb 10 kilometres outside of Cairo, today swallowed up by the city. And like most neighbourhoods in Vancouver, it’s high...

Can we create community out of diversity? If so, will it require changing the scale and character of urban forms within our communities…the very change some Lower Mainlanders have recently become notorious for rejecting?It’s one of many thorny questions tossed around, grappled over, and occasionally outshouted by our venerable host and his subject Mark Busse, Director of TILT Curiosity Labs at HCMA Architecture + Design, and host of the Creative Mornings Vancouver breakfast lecture series. Th...

In George Affleck’s world, the only thing worse than the politician who tries to please everyone is the politician who only focuses on the base.So you can understand why the only thing to possibly vex him more than last council — in which he withstood endless punishment from a neo-leftie Vision Vancouver majority — could be this council, the least experienced in…possibly forever.The two-time former NPA councillor, alongside friend of the podcast Rob McDowell, joins Gord to dissect the goings-...

Chris Fair helps places — communities, cities, regions — think about the future.That thinking drives the design of everything from the branding of a destination, to the design of streets, buildings and other public spaces, and what is put in them in order to make a city not just liveable, but loveable.Fair’s belief? That if you stop looking at how people behave, and begin understanding how people may want to behave in the future (in part through creative disruption, and of course big data), y...

If you follow Vancouver politics, you don’t need an intro to Melissa De Genova.In just her second term as Vancouver councillor, De Genova suddenly has the second-longest tenure of anyone in council chambers, and has also become (surprisingly, to some) one of the more credible authorities on policy, staff relations, and council protocol. Maybe even one of the adults in the room.Falling on the heels of three consecutive Vision Vancouver council majorities — in which De Genova was a favoured and...

Legendary is not a term to be taken lightly, but neither are the accomplishments of TEAM (The Electors’ Action Movement), the municipal political party formed in 1968 in Vancouver by Art Phillips. TEAM steamrolled into City Hall with an 8-seat majority in 1972, and is credited with steering the city into a direction which is often recognized as upholding a world-class standard for quality of life.Similarly, living legends are rare. But, in the case of V. Setty Pendakur — as with Vancouver cou...

Public transit consultant Jarrett Walker says the value of his work with municipalities around the world is never predicated on delivering his own recommendation. Instead, he says he “fosters conversations, leading to confident decisions”.That might get his firm Jarrett Walker + Associates the job. But as he demonstrates during this enlightening and entertaining chat — Price Talks’ second live recording at Gord’s West End apartment —”convening people in the presence of reality” is Walker’s tr...

The Sea Captain is the newly unveiled public art piece, held aloft from the ceiling of the newly upgraded Surrey Central SkyTrain station on Expo Line. It’s also, perhaps, an apt metaphor for themes covered in this episode.Themes like encounters with colonialism, and the different forms they can take. Figuring out how different peoples live together in one place.Gord explores these, and many other themes related to culture, settlement, and “the Canadian experiment”, in his wide-ranging ...

Check out Shauna Sylvester’s profile on LinkedIn. Don’t be shy — she invited all Vancouverites to connect with her on the well-behaved social network for the 2018 Vancouver civic election.It was one of a few memorable tactics Sylvester deployed during the endless campaign. Like having policy platforms, and speaking authentically about topics with which she had direct experience. Something definitely worked, because her independent run captured 20% of the vote in the mayoralty race, for third ...

Past Vancouver City Council candidates — and Price Talks pundits — Adrian Crook and Rob McDowell return to the podcast to give their latest letter grades to our local leaders.And much ground is covered in the process, including Rental 100, the Broadway-UBC subway, and the back-story to the cold shoulder given to Vancouver Rape Relief’s grant request. Plus, teapot tempests such as councillor budgets, and the big mistake Kennedy made early in his mayoral tenure.The team also ruminates on two of...

It was with some relish that the Price Talks production team spun the guest mic around to hear what the podcast’s namesake, the well-seasoned urbanist Gordon Price, might reveal when lightly grilled.An activist, political and urbanist voice in Metro Vancouver for four decades, Gord’s public life has been informed in no small part by his upbringing in Victoria, which included some formative cultural, social and personal influences that eventually led him — with some trepidation — to Vancouver’...

“Google ‘Tumlin NIMBY’ or ‘Tumlin Santa Monica’, and you can see a little bit of the story arc.”An effective stage-setting for a dialogue earlier this month, in front of a small gathering at Gord’s West End apartment, with Jeff Tumlin, Principal and Director of Strategy for Nelson Nygaard.One in a long-running series of Price Tags Soirées, and our first live audience recording, the chat included a Q&A with a few special guests well-known to #vanpoli followers.Tumlin, raised in LA and happ...

“There is a time coming, in our lives, when the tap of natural gas into our homes and into our city is going to be turned off. It’s not tomorrow — we have time to make adjustments.”As follow-up to his interview with Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle (Episode 19) — mover of a unanimously-approved motion to declare a climate emergency — Gord wanted to speak to one of the ‘generals’ working on a solution to coming disaster. Someone with the knowledge, experience, and character to not jus...

In 1997, as workers were stripping asbestos out of the old Woodward’s building, the Vancouver planner overseeing the project predicted it would take 10 to 20 years for Hastings Street to change. “From anything we can see, the community will be overwhelmingly low-income for that long,” Nathan Edelson told the Vancouver Sun.Flash forward 22 years, and he was both right and wrong. True, a lot has changed on Hastings Street since the opening of the new Woodward’s Building in 2010. The central pas...

This is the creation story of laneway housing in Vancouver…and, perhaps, the beginning of the end of the Bartholomew era of restrictive zoning.The protagonist is Jake Fry, a self-proclaimed — metaphorical, mind you — child of Trudeau, who grew up in small-town Ontario and attended a one-room schoolhouse. His real education might have come half a kilometre underground; coming from a family of miners, this is where Fry learned hard skills, carpentry first and foremost among them. This ultimatel...

“You don’t hold referendums in small communities on a case-by-case basis—you do what you were elected to do, and make difficult decisions for the greater good.”For anyone following politics in Metro Vancouver these days, this is become the sentiment of some in the planning profession. It’s a message about (and even directed towards, even if not in so many words) the many new, inexperienced members of council in city halls across the region proposing, and making decisions about, the very real ...

When Portlandians prepared to elect a new mayor in the months leading up to the May 2016 primary vote, few saw Sarah Iannarone coming.As co-founder of First Stop Portland, the organization responsible for telling the city’s sustainability story, and owner of a popular brunch spot in the so-hip-it-hurts Southeast PDX neighbourhood, Iannarone was a political neophyte. She jumped into the race, and with a firm grasp of progressive environmental, social and economic values — and a compellingly fo...

She’s the new Mayor of the City of North Vancouver, a former councillor and school trustee with a life of public service in her community. He’s a first-time Council member, who’s devoted countless hours in recent years to advocacy for better cycling policies and more public spaces.And while they didn’t run on a ticket — few candidates for public office in Metro Vancouver do — Linda Buchanan and Tony Valente are singing from the same song sheet.Among other ambitions, they want to invite more d...

In a rite of passage, ‘liminal’ refers to the transition point that is neither here nor there; a threshold that can result in multiple interpretations or outcomes, and thus (often) confusion. In this episode, Wes Regan, Social Planner responsible for Community Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Initiatives with the City of Vancouver, aptly uses this word to describe his work space at the downtown Woodward’s Building and, by extension, the city’s current approach to community economic ...

Today’s moving day for the Bruntletts, a foursome who have come to represent, over the past decade, Vancouver’s culture of cycling in the mainstream.Think normal clothes, kids in cargo bikes, and families who embrace the car-free lifestyle, riding around the seawall, or along a quiet neighbourhood street— the Bruntletts have helped shape this image.What began as writing to (and for) local media in support of transportation cycling evolved into their own media creations, through their consulta...

During a Vancouver Council meeting on January 16, 2019, a motion moved by Councillor Christine Boyle to declare a global state of climate emergency was carried unanimously.With nine “whereas” clauses — referencing the impacts of BC and California wildfires, the emergency debates at various levels of government following the UN’s recent IPCC report on global warming, the estimated future costs of climate-related disasters to Vancouver, and our current vulnerabilities — plus half a dozen amendm...

Kate Lambert (IBI), Paige Ritchie (Intracorp), and Carla Guererra (Purpose Driven Development, Planning and Strategy) are members of the Urban Land Institute, an independent, nonprofit research and education organization with almost 40,000 members worldwide, over 400 of whom are based in British Columbia. They’re also founding members of the Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI), with a stated objective of supporting and promoting the advancement of women in all disciplines of the real estate i...

They call him Downtown Charles. Okay, he calls himself that, but it fits. For the past 27 years, Charles Gauthier has led the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, one of hundreds of BIAs that sprung up across Canada (and the world) in the past 40 years.Beginning in 1992, with a downtown business core saddled with double-digit commercial vacancy rates, Gauthier has helped usher in new programs aimed at stimulating greater public engagement in more public spaces. More promotiona...

“Metaphorically-speaking, the clothes I put on fit me,” says Dr. Lawrence Frank, one of the most-published and highly-cited urban planners in the world.Having started his career in landscape architecture, Dr. Frank’s 1985 thesis on transit mall design eventually led to a Masters of Civil Engineering Transportation Studies and a PhD in Urban Design and Planning, both from the University of Washington. Dr. Frank worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation and held faculty roles...

In recent years, critics have accused both Liberal and NDP cabinets of rushing through inadequate electoral reforms via BC’s Local Election Campaign Financing Act, or LECFA. The most recent round of changes took effect last April, impacting the 2018 municipal elections across the province.What were they all about? Are BC municipalities in-line with campaign financing limits and disclosure requirements at the provincial and federal levels? What is “the dark money”, and why is that still a thin...

If you’ve kept up with regional news on BC’s south coast over the past 35 years, chances are you’re familiar with Daphne Bramham’s work, and its impact.Starting out at the Regina Post-Leader, Bramham moved to the west coast as political reporter for The Canadian Press, until eventually joining the Vancouver Sun. From beat and investigative reporter, to associate editor and columnist, Bramham has helped BC readers understand more about power and politics at all levels of government, and diffic...

From A to F, where would you grade Vancouver City Council? This was the question posed by Gordon Price to two of “The Independents” — podcast guests and past Council candidates Adrian Crook and Rob McDowell.In this end-of-year wrap up, and summation of standout moments in council chambers over their first two months in office, Gord, Adrian and Rob talk about all manner of hot topics, many of which will be back on the agenda (and in the Comments section and your news feed) in the new yea...

That’s “Downtown Eastside” — a tragic shorthand, an acronym that’s deserving (at the very least) of a full explanation. What’s happening? How did we get to the current situation? And why can’t we find our way out?Karen Ward is a member of the “we”. She’s an ardent and eloquent activist who lives in the neighbourhood and provides emotional support to her vast personal network — a community which spans from Woodwards to Oppenheimer Park, from the foot of Main Street to City Hall. Karen is a for...

Ian Bushfield is one-third of Vancouver politics podcast Cambie Report, one-half of its older, BC-focused cousin PolitiCoast, and executive director of BC Humanist Association.He’s also co-creator of a new classification method — a simple but compelling matrix — for visualizing the political and urbanist ideologies of the people and parties that ran for, and now occupy, City Hall.Gord spoke to Bushfield at length about the urbanist-conservationist axis and what it means in the current po...

“The price of exclusivity in Shaughnessy, Kerrisdale and West Point Grey is gentrification everywhere else.”Much has been said about Vancouver’s housing crisis, and much has been promised. But now things are about to get real — and advocacy groups are ready. Particularly at Abundant Housing Vancouver.AHV is a voice for more — policy reform (renter protections, land value capture, zoning laws), non-market housing, and purpose-built rental units. For this, not to mention the specious claims the...

“We came within an eyelash of running the table.”And he’s not wrong. Ken Sim, founder and CEO of homecare provider Nurse Next Door and bagel chain Rosemary Rocksalt, is just two months removed from having come within 957 votes of being the mayor of Vancouver. With five NPA Vancouver councillors, Sim would have led a majority, and thus the face of municipal (and perhaps regional) politics might look very different than it does today.Having returned to regular family and business life, he goes ...

Gord visited District of North Vancouver Municipal Hall this week, to chat with Councillor Mathew Bond about about the failed Delbrook motion to allow a parking lot at 600 W Queens Road to become the site of an 80-unit affordable residential building, with a seniors respite care and below-market rentals. It was rejected 5-2 by the new council — following two years of planning and community consultation, the result of a complex partnership and collaboration.What does the vote say about t...

A fixture in Port Coquitlam politics for the past 16 years — two terms as councillor, three as mayor — Greg Moore has also been a figurehead and ardent champion for the entire region.As chair of the Metro Vancouver board for seven years, and chair of the Mayors Ten Year Vision Committee in the midst of his decade-long tenure on the TransLink Mayors Council, Moore rolled up his sleeves and left indelible marks of leadership and organizational effectiveness on both organizations, while helping ...

In the opening op-ed, Gord blends some historical context into the current debate over renovictions and the state of Vancouver’s mid-rise rental stock, in a profile of West End icon The Berkeley.Then, a deep-dive interview with former diplomat — and independent council candidate in Vancouver’s recent election — Rob McDowell. A professional adjudicator and mediator, Rob talks about his entry into the political world over three decades ago, his decision to run for council for a third time...

Gordon Price and Tom Davidoff chat with newly elected Vancouver Councillor Lisa Dominato on how her successful run in the recent election was informed by her experiences as a school trustee, working in public policy with the provincial government, and through conversations with voters during the campaign.Plus, her take on the issue of the day — fulfilling the housing needs of the ‘missing middle’. What does she think about prior Council decision on duplexes? How can neighbourhood voices help ...

An opening op-ed from Gord, celebrating 60 years of the Planning Institute of BC, and highlighting some of what came to influence Vancouverism in the period 1986-2010.The main segment features a housing discussion between Josh Gordon, Assistant Professor at the School of Public Policy at SFU, and Tom Davidoff, Associate Professor of the Strategy and Business Economics Division at UBC Sauder School of Business, hosted by Price Tags Managing Editor Colin Stein. Read more »

Gord reviews the recent municipal campaign with four unsuccessful candidates for Vancouver City Council who ran as independents, together. Sort of.Harm reduction and Downtown Eastside activist Sarah Blyth, affordable housing and transit advocate Adrian Crook, Musqueam First Nation community leader Wade Grant, and health sector mediator Rob McDowell chat about what happened, what they’re watching with the current council, issues of representation in our public institutions, and whether they’ll...

In this episode, editor-in-chief Gordon Price opens with an audio op-ed, on how Vancouver’s #CouncilSoWhite may not be as telling as we think. The main segment features Price Tags managing editor Colin Stein talking to Maria Dobrinskaya, BC Director of the Broadbent Institute, and Simka Marshall of the BC Federation of Students, on electoral reform in the province…and why Pro Rep is LIT. Read more »

In this debut episode of Price Talks, Gordon sits down with Tom Davidoff, Associate Professor of the Strategy and Business Economics Division at UBC Sauder School of Business to talk about the region’s housing affordability crisis. Read more »

Gordon Price welcomes you to the podcast of the blog. Price Talks is available on Apple iTunes and Google Play. More to come. Read more »

Marc Lee has a sort of duality imbued in him that gives him a unique perspective on the world. Raised by a single mother who put him through private school at the prestigious Upper Canada College, Marc developed a perspective on both sides of the spectrum. His work as Senior Economist at the Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives has taken him from the trade agreements, Globalization and Neoliberalism of the 90s, to today’s housing crisis, and on to looking at the growing precarity of the gi...

Recently retired from federal politics, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones has had a distinguished career; from grassroots local politics, to helping improve the peace and security of women on a global scale. Gord and Pamela talk about densification, reconciliation, the reason she got into federal politics, being a good neighbour, and more. Read more »

Director of government relations for the Homebuilders Association Vancouver and 4th generation Japanese-Canadian Mark Sakai talks internment, immigration, growing up in Steveston and housing.Housing. What’s important? Mark asks: can you find the housing you want at your stage of life? Single family housing? Spoiler, it still dominates, but you’re probably going to look in Maple Ridge or Abbotsford, or Brandon, Manitoba for that matter, unless your pockets have depth and breadth. Two-thirds of...

While the majority of the 27 million practitioners of Sikhism live in India — most living in the state of Punjab — half a million Sikhs reside in Canada.In fact, 1 in 20 British Columbians is Sikh. And according to Gian Singh Sandhu, founding president of the World Sikh Organization (WSO), so is 1 in 4 Surrey residents.Sikhism is one of the (if not the) fastest-growing religion in Metro Vancouver. As the Vancouver Sun noted a few years ago, “B.C. is the only province in Canada, and one of the...

If you needed more evidence that environmental issues are no longer fringe issues, all you have to do is look at Vancouver Greens’ Adriane Carr.Her 74,000 votes in the 2014 municipal election was the most by a Vancouver council candidate since 1996…and perhaps ever? Had she run for mayor in 2018, she might have won, and by as many as 20,000 votes.Born at VGH and raised in east Van, Carr’s future political life began auspiciously — a Master’s degree in Geography under the tutelage of UBC’s Dav...

Sarah Blyth first started to see the spike in drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside community in 2016.From her vantage point as manager of the DTES Market, she couldn’t help but see it. People were literally dying in the street.So she decided to do something about it. Rob sums it up: “You saw the need, set up a tent, and tried to save lives”. Yup.Blyth’s role as founder and Executive Director of the Overdose Prevention Society is the latest in a series of contributions to the city by a pers...

It wasn’t that long ago that British Columbians were saying, “What the hell is going on in Maple Ridge?”In 2014, voters elected Nicole Read as mayor of the region’s eastern outpost …and then subjected her to a virulent strain of online harassment which, after two years, resulted in threats that prompted an RCMP investigation, and ultimately her decision to not rerun in the 2018 election.The reason for the harassment? The appearance of a homeless camp in an empty lot at a cul-de-sac on Cliff A...

What does it mean to change a street name? What does it mean to be able to fish? What does it mean to have title over the land upon which you, and your people, were born?This line of questioning may not immediately resonate with the majority of Canadians going to the polls today, intent on electing (or re-electing) the next Prime Minister. But it matters a hell of a lot to Indigenous people, to the Musqueam Indian Band, and specifically to Wade Grant.In this long-awaited discussion with the U...

The latest in our Passing the Torch series introduces us to Thomas Bevan, a Millennial who’s already left his mark on Vancouver.From his youth in Kitchener, Ontario — and a “difficult relationship” with a downtown that wasn’t quite the hotspot it has since become — to his graduate studies at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (“a dreamland…a beautiful place”) and current work with BC Housing, Bevan stepped into the world of urbanism with a naturally intuitive sense that the econo...

One thing is proven without a doubt in this wide-ranging, deep political dive with Gord, Rob, and return guest George Affleck — these guys don’t know their Tolkien.And while there was no cranky, right-wing guy in Middle Earth, there is a central character whose very rigid way of thinking begins to soften. If that seems to be the case with Affleck, it may be with the benefit of retrospect, especially with an eye to the performance of current council, and specifically in contrast to its predece...