Kirk LaPointe wants to be the next mayor of Vancouver.
To do that, the NPA mayoral candidate has to convince voters that he will be a better leader for the city than Mayor Gregor Robertson, who has been in office since 2008 and is seeking a third term at city hall.
LaPointe is a longtime media executive, a former CBC ombudsman and presently heads up Self-Counsel Press. He is also an adjunct professor at University of B.C.’s journalism school.
Last week, he sat down with the Courier to take our questions. The meeting was live-streamed from Creekside Community Centre.
Here is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.
Courier: Why are you running for mayor?
LaPointe: In all the best journalism that I was associated with at places like CTV and the National Post and, of course, the Vancouver Sun, I was trying to achieve a strengthening of the community. And a lot of our best projects were involved in that, along with projects that were collaborative, too. So I see this as really an extension of that work. A lot of the work that I did was in management, and I’ve had a lot of experience turning around operations. They come with their challenges, but I think I’ve ended up with some great managerial experience to bring forward to the city.
Courier: What makes you think you can beat Mayor Gregor Robertson when he has previously beaten two NPA mayoral candidates (Peter Ladner and Suzanne Anton), both of whom had more political experience than you?
LaPointe: I have more managerial experience going into politics than Gregor did going into politics. I think he spoke maybe four or five times in the provincial legislature when he was an MLA, before he came to city hall. He didn’t have a particularly extensive track record and people elected him and elected him twice. So I believe that it is time for a change, and people do see that. Our research really indicates that it is widely held in the city.
Courier: At a recent forum hosted by the Metro Vancouver Alliance, you told the crowd, “I’m not the NPA leader you might think you know.” What were you trying to get at with that?
LaPointe: For the record, here’s who I am: I was born to a single mother. I grew up in poverty. My mother had to make this really awful choice. She had another son 11 years earlier and she had to decide which one of us she could afford to keep. And so she sent my brother away to live with friends in New Brunswick. We were in Toronto at the time. So I grew up in poverty. I have a very different background than I think people might assume. I have not only compassion for people who are vulnerable and who lack the privilege that I’ve been lucky enough to get over my career. But I actually think I understand how to work with vulnerable sectors in order to make sure that we make progress on the issues that matter to them.
Courier: You’ve gone after Vision Vancouver for stealing your thunder on their announcement to spend $400,000 to double the amount of money dedicated to the Vancouver School Board’s breakfast program. What’s your plan to ensure kids don’t go hungry?
LaPointe: It’s much more comprehensive. It involves a wide range of partners, and I’ve met many of them in this campaign. It validated my own theory on this one, which is that there are a lot of people with a lot of wealth who are prepared to step up. So we would do that. We would enlist our community centres. We would enlist our neighbourhood houses. We would enlist clubs that now exist because school doesn’t sit 365 days a year. We need to do it 365 days a year.
Courier: You’ve told your story of growing up poor many times during the campaign. Why do you think voters need to know that?
LaPointe: Well, because I think they see me in a suit. They see my career. They probably think that somehow I was born into some privilege, and I think they need to understand that I have lived a wide life in which I grew up poor, struggled, became somewhat independent, self-sufficient and was able to make my way. But I understand that not everybody’s going to have that good fortune, and that actually the city has an obligation to make sure that those that don’t have those opportunities, have the support they need.
Courier: You mentioned partners are ready to step up to help fund programs for poor children. Is that something we’re going to find out about before Nov. 15?
LaPointe: A few of them have said that they’re willing to step up and talk about it. A few of them want to wait for the election outcome. I’ve talked to many of them. They’re prepared to widen what they have. It might be a bit unfair to discuss it, but in one case I can tell you they have more money available than the City of Vancouver will permit them to spend because the City of Vancouver has determined that the program needs to be delivered in a particular way.
Courier: Let’s move on and talk about a big issue in the campaign, affordability. Can a city government actually make any gains in this city when housing prices and rents are insanely high for a lot of people?
LaPointe: Well, you don’t want to say that there’s no hope. It’s time for us to have this great conversation about what kind of community we want to build again. It’s not going to take us a long time. There are desired outcomes of housing for seniors, for young families and for first-time homebuyers that would be clearly articulated. I think there would also need to be an objective to deal with our rental situation because we’re clearly not addressing all of that, too.
Courier: You’ve talked about the need to attract higher paying jobs here. You’ve talked about getting the liquefied natural gas industry to set up regional offices in Vancouver.
LaPointe: Well, not just simply with LNG, but really to basically say that we’re no longer ashamed of being part of a resource economy. But that’s one element of it. Another element that I think is really critical, is that we are an expensive city to just, frankly, live in. So that’s why we look at things like some of our parking issues. That’s why I think we’ll propose, over the next number of days, some ways in which people will be able to enjoy the city more, have more amenities, without paying more.
Courier: There’s been a lot of pushback from residents about the proliferation of towers to meet density goals. Is there a place for high rises in neighbourhoods?
LaPointe: When we actually sit back and revitalize the CityPlan, we’re going to have to approach the issue and determine if neighbourhood by neighbourhood there is a place for it. I don’t want to predict the outcome on that one. I do know that where development has really gone wrong in the city, is that when neighbourhoods just haven’t been properly consulted. The consultation has been a bit phoney, and it’s been a bit back ended.
That the determination has been made to proceed with a project and then the public hearings have been largely a bit of a sham.
Courier: You said consultation hasn’t worked, but there’s some who would argue, certainly Vision supporters, that say, for the Marpole Community Plan, they had a lot of consultation. They put a draft out. They got a lot of complaints. And so they reeled back a little bit, and they ended up with a plan which a lot of people were comfortable with in the end. So do you not think consultation worked in that case?
LaPointe: I think there’s still a lot of dissatisfied people in Marpole. I talked to some of them again last week, and I know our candidates went over the weekend to a neighbourhood all-candidates’ debate there. And certainly the expression was that people were not happy. What [Vision Vancouver] is doing now is they’re not writing reports with pros and cons of every project. They’re writing essentially a high school essay that’s arguing a particular position and looking at the strengths of it from the city’s perspective and then asking the community to kind of fight it down. And so I think at the front end, we need a lot better information. That information will lead to a better consultation. That consultation will get us a better decision.
Courier: Let’s talk about the Grandview-Woodland plan for a moment and the Citizens’ Assembly. You were asked about it at the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods meeting last week, and you seemed to suggest that you would stop [the Citizens’ Assembly]. Is that the case?
LaPointe: I don’t think the assembly is the answer. I really don’t. We need to also engage other parts of the community when we are dealing with a neighbourhood because they’re not the only ones using the neighbourhood. They’re the ones living there, but there are other users for the neighbourhood. So we can get ourselves into a bit of trouble when we only focus in on local residents. And when we handpick them the way the assembly was, I don’t think that that’s necessarily the most impartial way to do it.
Courier: Should you be elected, by the time you’re in power, that process will have been underway for almost six months, halfway done. The report is set to be released in June. A lot of money has and will be spent on it. Would you not want to wait until there was a report and see what the report said?
LaPointe: We’re not going to stop the clock on absolutely everything. That wouldn’t be responsible economically for the city. So I want to make sure that we don’t stop everything. But we have to take a pause with a few of the projects, and we have to review a few things. And I think that that’s healthy.
Courier: So would you hit “pause” or “stop?”
LaPointe: I’d certainly hit pause.
Courier: When asked about Mayor Gregor Robertson’s promise to end “street homelessness” by 2015, you said, “I’d not only continue the goal, I’d get results from it.” So how do you plan to do that?
LaPointe: We need a different kind of conversation. Where we are really not coming to grips with this as a city is just how out of the national conversation Vancouver is on a variety of fronts. But we need to make homelessness a national concern, not a city concern.
Courier: But the mayor has said the city needs more assistance from senior levels of government.
LaPointe: But he has no conversation going on at a federal level on justice or health. He has none on a provincial level on housing or education or health. He has none with the First Nations communities that are so important for some of the specific indigenous needs in this case. He has a very, very meagre conversation going on with the for-profit sector, with some of the people that do development down there [in the Downtown Eastside].
Courier: Well, we’ll let him debate that with you. But we want to take you back to what you said — that you would get results from this goal to end street homelessness. What kind of results?
LaPointe: Well, a couple of things that need to happen right away. We have about $360 million dollars being spent in that district and only a really small fraction of it actually stays there. So we need to find ways to make sure that that money stays there. I would propose right away a forensic audit with other levels of government [in it].
Courier: The open drug market in the Downtown Eastside persists. What would an NPA government do to tackle the problem?
LaPointe: Some of it, I believe, needs to be stronger enforcement. But a lot of it is, quite honestly, getting the support systems that are necessary there for dealing with addiction issues. So for things like InSite, we need to make sure that we’re foursquare behind it.
Courier: So would you want more injection sites in the city?
LaPointe: Well, it’s not wanting. It’s whether you have to have them in some cases.
Courier: Dr. Patricia Daly of Vancouver Coastal Health says there is a demand for more.
LaPointe: If we have to have them, then I just want to make sure that they’re thoroughly supported and that there’s good enforcement around them.
Courier: Don’t you think we need more?
LaPointe: I think that we have to have the support services where they belong, absolutely.
Courier: So that’s a yes?
LaPointe: You love yes or no. [laughs]
Courier: Vancouver Coastal Health has talked about the idea of putting injection sites in existing clinics. Is that something you would be in favour of?
LaPointe: I’m interested in looking at that, yeah.
Courier: Do you support a subway along the Broadway corridor?
LaPointe: Yes, I do. I always have, but the difference is that [Gregor Robertson] doesn’t have the support that he says he has. There is no dialogue going on between Vancouver and Ottawa. It’s irresponsible to play disrespectfully with the voters of Vancouver and suggest that there is a deal done or that there is a Broadway subway line coming out to UBC. I can borrow your pen and sketch out something, and that’s about as much of a proposal that exists to go out to UBC. That’s a giant project, and that’s many, many years away.
Courier: Do you support building more separated bike lanes?
LaPointe: Oh, I support them. I just want to make sure that we build them in a way that is safer and that does not create the division that we have now. I actually think the next proposal for a bike lane is going to be a big fight. And it’s going to be a big fight because the last couple that have been built have been over the objections of those that use those roads.
Courier: What’s your position on Kinder Morgan’s proposal to build another pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby?
LaPointe: We worry about Burrard Inlet. We worry about our coast line. We worry about increased tanker traffic. And so if the [National Energy Board] is going to review this project and approve it, it has to be approved as the world’s best built project. Anything short of that, we will oppose it. And I think that’s as firm a position as we can take given the fact that we do not have jurisdictional oversight on the project.
Courier: Do you favour a ban on union and corporate donations for election campaigns?
LaPointe: I favour a real cap on them, a very low cap. But I’d like to start with having the province set the pace on this one. And the reason is that it’s so easy now for funds to leak in from other territories. So I even worry that a provincial solution to this is not necessarily going to turn the entire thing around. If they want to start disclosing their sources this afternoon, we would do the same. But we actually are the underdogs, and we are the under financed ones in this campaign.
Courier: We find that hard to believe, since your party’s former vice-president, Rob Macdonald, donated $960,000 in the 2011 campaign.
LaPointe: [He made the donations] in order to make up for what was otherwise going to be a shortfall in the spending. And that was really it. Rob Macdonald’s not doing that this time.
Next in the series: COPE’s Meena Wong Oct. 31.
