Just 18 minutes after Green Party member Janet Fraser was sworn into office as a Vancouver School Board trustee Monday night she made political history. This was the first time anywhere in the country a member of her party would hold the balance of power on an elected body.
With four NPA and four Vision trustees elected, Fraser chose to exercise that power to clearly shift the school board to the right: she threw her support in the vote for school board chair to the Non-Partisan Association’s Christopher Richardson.
In doing that she rejected Vision’s Patti Bacchus, one of the most popular board chairs in recent history and the person who topped the polls in last month’s election. And thus ended Fraser’s political honeymoon.
Among those attending the meeting and applauding the decision were the two Green Party members who were her advisers on the matter, Coun. Adriane Carr and park board commissioner Stuart Mackinnon. As well, in the standing-room-only crowd of more than 100, there was failed NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe, there to enjoy one small victory in spite of his own personal defeat.
Fraser’s reason simply put was that people “voted for change,” although it is a debatable assertion when looking at the numbers. I would argue that at school board Vision suffered from vote-splitting among the overabundance of centre-left candidates to choose from, rather than a genuine desire to throw the bums out.
But we do know that for almost a week the Greens and Vision were engaged in a game of chicken. A meeting between Fraser, Carr and Mackinnon and the four Vision trustees went something like this according to Vision trustee Mike Lombardi. It followed a request to meet from Fraser and boiled down to a Green demand that Fraser would support a Vision trustee for chair so long as it wasn’t Bacchus. Fraser also wanted the chair and vice-chair of the board to be from different parties.
Vision folks said they would decide on their own nomination for chair and that would be Bacchus. Fraser and her advisers then moved off to have a discussion with the NPA trustees.
By the end of last week, Fraser told me, she had made up her mind to support the NPA.
We won’t know until 3 p.m. today (Friday) when the agenda for Monday’s school board meeting is posted online, whether the Greens managed to extract that same promise about the chair and vice-chair from the NPA.
Nor will we know until then how trustees fare in terms of committee assignments.
But here is what we do know. In spite of her comment when she was first elected that she would consult with her running mate Mischa Oak before making a decision about the board chair, that does not appear to have happened. Oak has been explicitly critical of the decision, tweeting that he would have supported Bacchus “in a heartbeat.” Oak told the Globe and Mail he was shocked and disappointed by Fraser’s vote. He added, “I’ve been getting a lot of calls from people who voted Green, because they thought it was a progressive vote, and they feel quite alienated, quite duped by this.”
Pete Fry, who was a Green council candidate, said he wasn’t consulted and was “a bit blind-sided” by the decision to support the NPA. Given all the kerfuffle the NPA made about the school board rejecting Chevron money, “this was a bad time to do it” and a bad time to “knee cap Patti Bacchus,” he said.
We also know that the blow-back from Fraser’s decision goes beyond phone calls to Mischa Oak. It has shaken up social media from here to Ottawa and it has tarnished the Green brand.
Green Party MP and federal leader Elizabeth May is in a pissing match with Vision executive director Stepan Vdovine on Twitter. You can imagine who is on what side.
Until now Vision voters have frequently tossed an extra vote towards Green candidates. Not as likely in the future. And you can bet the provincial NDP will jump on this, too.
If there is one saving note for the rookie trustee, it is this: Fraser has said she will not support the NPA when it comes to taking money from Chevron.
Good.
