(This is the second in an occasional series regarding the goofy goings on related to the governance of Premier Christy Clark.)
I may not be able to tell you the difference between a downward facing dog and a salutation to the sun. I can however tell you when something on the political landscape is totally whacky.
But before I get to the once-on, now-off yoga thingy on the Burrard Bridge and the city’s involvement in all of this, let me update you on a matter raised in the first of this series.
It dealt primarily with the goofy election campaign whim by our Premier Clark insisting that, if we wanted more money for regional transportation infrastructure, we first had to have a regional transit plebiscite to raise taxes.
While the plebiscite vote ended almost three weeks ago, we are still awaiting the results. Meanwhile the mayors’ council has reported they spent just shy of $6 million on the Vote Yes campaign.
Since then our whimsical premier has said that, no matter the result of the plebiscite, money would have to be invested in transit infrastructure anyway, which makes you wonder why we went through this costly divisive exercise in the first place.
Clark’s most recent moment of whimsy was her plan to shut down the Burrard Bridge for seven hours this coming Sunday morning. She would have hosted a massive 60 minute “yoga class” in celebration of International Yoga Day.
And I bet you thought it was a joke.
On June 12, along with the bridge closure, she also announced the event sponsors: they included two of her party’s political supporters Lululemon and Altagas, an LNG outfit that was going to throw $10,000 into the pot.
Taxpayers would pick up the other $150,000 this little bit of stretching and deep breathing would cost.
Of course, all of that has been well canvassed elsewhere. But what has not been explained is this: How did Clark get the authority to completely close down a bridge in Vancouver?
So here’s how it happened. Here’s how the city and Mayor Gregor Robertson’s council buddies helped Clark out. Namaste.
The formal application for the event was filed with the city’s FEST committee on behalf of the premier by Norman Stowe’s Pace Communications. The committee is usually the same bunch of faceless bureaucrats, including engineering, police and fire folks, who would approve everything from a block party to a fan zone.
In this case though, deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston was put in charge of the file.
To help grease the wheels on the application, the premier had one of her senior staffers call the mayor’s chief of staff Mike Magee to make it clear this was a high priority.
In fairness to Johnston and Magee, they tried to wave off the proposal by suggesting less disruptive and less politically sensitive venues than the Burrard Bridge. After all, the city had just announced it was planning to permanently eliminate another traffic lane on the bridge and turn it over to (Yikes!) cyclists. No luck.
Vision councillors were apprised of the request before the decision was made. In a word, they thought the plan was nuts. This is not just because of the disruption to traffic this extraordinary shut down would cause.
The premier made a big deal of this event “building on the province’s priority of strengthening economic and cultural ties with India.” Checking their own calendars, councillors quickly realized Christy was endorsing the wrong Indians. The day she chose was also National Aboriginal Day, and besides, we had just received the stirring report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.Councillors were well aware there would be serious blowback from the citizenry and First Nations (one native leader called the idea “flakey” and “political opportunism.”)
Nonetheless, Vision council and the mayor chose not to block the event while making sure that Robertson distanced himself from it by saying he was going to honour the other Indians.
Of course the premier would bail out, too, claiming her intent to “celebrate peace and harmony” had “drifted towards politics.”
Really.
@allengarr
