In my last column I looked at top donors for the NPA, Vancouver's voice of the business class. This time, let's take a look at top donors for Vision Vancouver and COPE, and then reflect on the impending civic election.
Vision's largest backer in 2008 was the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which donated close to a quarter million dollars to Vision and its candidates. Next in line was a cluster of linked organizations, Strategic Communications, Communicopia Incorporated and Renewal Partners. Together these three bodies gave Vision over $198,000.00. StratCom and Communicopia are public relations and communications companies, while Renewal Partners is one of the main vehicles for Carol Newell and Joel Solomon, both heirs to substantial fortunes and both committed to using their wealth to promote social change. Renewal, says its website, "_puts the powerful tools of business and philanthropy to work in the creation of a triple bottom line economy." When right wing pundits carry on about the dangers of off shore money having too much impact on Vancouver politics, they often invoke Newell and Solomon, both U.S. born, as the scare figures to illustrate their trumped up and partisan alarm.
(A smaller but more mysterious supporter of Vision in 2008 was a firm identified as Aurora Trading, which gave $30,000 dollars. No such firm seems to be listed in any Lower Mainland phonebook, and even the omniscient Google comes up empty of B.C. entries for the company.)
Other significant Vision donors included the Hospital Employees Union, Keg Restaurants, the Canadian Labour Congress and Canacord Capital.
COPE, the city party widely and accurately viewed as voicing the concerns of working people and the poor in the city, did not benefit from much support from local developers or from the progressive heirs at Renewal Partners. Although COPE received a few hundred dollars from Renewal and Joel Solomon, and, as noted in my last column Concord Pacific head Terry Hui gave a puzzling $2,000 to the left wing party, most of COPE's funding came from organized labour (with CUPE giving nearly $200,000 and VESTA, the BCTF section that represents elementary school teachers in Vancovuer putting up nearly $50,000) and individual donors.
So, knowing a bit more about who funded Vancouver politics last time, what conclusions might we draw about the upcoming election? First of all, forget the nonsense about "special interests." The usual drill for all parties is to condemn the "special interests" that fund the opposition and imply that their own donors are inspired only by the highest ideals. This is not, in the end, persuasive. It makes more sense to assume that all donations are colored by the long-term goals of the donor. It also makes sense to vote for the party or candidates whose donor lists and public pronouncements suggest they support the goals and policies the voter favours. Remember that the city gets the government policies that donors pay for, by and large.
On that test, this voter will give his support to the entire COPE slate and most of the Vision Vancouver candidate list, while setting aside a couple votes for Green candidate Adriane Carr and De-Growth Vancouver's Chris Shaw, both of whom would bring important perspectives and voices to the council table. If the city ends up with a second term of Gregor Robertson's leadership tempered by a council on which COPE's three outstanding candidates are joined by Carr and Shaw, Vision's ongoing temptation to govern as a slightly updated and green tinged version of the NPA would be less likely to send the city lurching to the right. I am serene in preferring candidates who are supported by unions and well meaning "social capitalists" like the Renewal Partners gang over NPA candidates who rely on support from old style "red in tooth and claw" capitalists like their campaign head Peter Armstrong of Rocky Mountaineer lockout infamy.
