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Green Party goes above and beyond, selecting candidates for council, school and park board

Vision council candidate accuses Greens of breaking agreement
green council nominees
Green Party candidates for council: Adriane Carr, Pete Fry, David Wong and Michael Wiebe.

Vancouver’s Green Party appears to have broken its agreement with the Vancouver and District Labour Council electing to run four candidates for council.

The party held its nomination meeting at Heritage Hall on Main Street Wednesday night, nominating four candidates for council, three for park board and four for school board.

Council candidates include incumbent Adriane Carr, Pete Fry, who was the party’s candidate in last year’s byelection, current park board commissioner Michael Wiebe and David Wong, an architect who ran for the Greens in the Vancouver-Hastings riding in the 2017 provincial election.

Incumbent park board commissioner and current board chair, Stuart Mackinnon was chosen to run for another term on the board, along with Inner City Farm founder Camil Dumont and horticulturalist Dave Demers.

Incumbent school board trustees Janet Fraser, who is the current board chair, and Estrellita Gonzalez will try for another term.

The party also chose Lois Chan-Pedley and Nicholas Chernen as the other candidates for school board. Chernen previously ran for council in 2014 for the Cedar Party, which he co-founded with his brother Glen Chernen. Glen Chernen finished in third place in the Non-Partisan Association’s mayoral candidate race on June 3.

Earlier this month, the Vancouver and District Labour Council announced agreements with the Green Party of Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, OneCity, COPE and Jean Swanson. At the time, the Greens said the party would run three council candidates, three for park board and three for school board.

After last night’s results, Vision council candidate Diego Cardona took to Twitter to criticize the Greens’ decision to run more candidates than originally agreed upon.

 

In a media release posted on its website Thursday, the Green Party stated: “The Green Party of Vancouver is in continuing discussions with the Vancouver District Labour Council (VDLC) about the number of candidates the Green Party of Vancouver will run, noting that Vision Vancouver, OneCity and COPE have all received VDLC support for running more candidates than the VDLC intends to endorse.”

The VDLC agreement states that after each party declares its nominees, it will “then determine endorsement for each of the five organizations in accordance with its recommendation process, and its decisions not to endorse any more candidates than the seats available, or to endorse a majority for any party at any level.”

The VDLC defines a majority as a maximum of four candidates if a party is running a mayoral candidate, and a maximum of five if it is not.

Vision, which is set to hold its nomination meeting July 8, has said the party intends to run five council candidates as well as Ian Campbell for mayor.

The VDLC reacted to the Green Party’s announcement on Twitter, saying: “We will be meeting to discuss this development early next week and cannot comment until we have done so. We understand that a decision was made to run one more for Council and for School Board than previously anticipated.”

With files from Mike Howell

@JessicaEKerr

jkerr@vancourier.com