Have we scapegoated Mayor Gregor Robertson on housing?

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has taken much of the heat for inaction on housing. But what about other municipal politicians? This post is a call to readers to direct us to comments that local politicians have made over the past few years that reveal they were clearly taking a stand for residents over foreign capital. Gerry Kahrmann / PNG

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Many commentators are correct in saying that Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was slow to recognize how an onslaught of foreign capital was making the city’s housing unaffordable.

Along with all the strong criticism Robertson has taken on social media, The Vancouver Sun and Province have frequently reported on people arguing he’s fallen gravely short on housing.

Following Robertson’s announcement Wednesday that he would not seek another term in office, Globe columnist Gary Mason also said Robertson “would have gone into the next civic vote dogged by the one issue that will cast a long and ominous shadow over his record: housing.”

There’s some truth to these criticisms. But sometimes I think the public, and the media, put too much of a spotlight on the mayor of Vancouver. Why have we let so many other municipal politicians off the hook?

With his high profile and longevity in office, Robertson has come to symbolize political inaction on housing, as well as denialism — including with his 2015 accusation that an Andy Yan study about foreign capital had “racist tones.” (That red herring echoed the tactics of real-estate industry officials.)

But despite his lack of overall effectiveness, Robertson, and Vision, have probably done more to at least try to address the housing issue than most municipal politicians in Metro Vancouver. There is a great deal of blame to go around.

As far as I’m aware, most of Metro Vancouver’s mayors and councillors have said precious little about how foreign capital was making their municipalities unaffordable for locals.

This is a call to readers to direct us to any comments municipal politicians, such as Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie (photo), have made that reveal they were clearly taking a stand for local residents over foreign capital. Arlen Redekop / PNG

Please correct me if I’m wrong, since it’s hard to track every media outlet and council in this region of 2.5 million people, but I’m not aware of any substantial remarks about the contribution of foreign capital to the local housing crisis from Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie, Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan, Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart or Surrey Mayor Linda Hepner, to name a few influential politicians.

This is not to mention the silence coming from most of the more than 100 city councillors throughout Metro Vancouver — with rare exceptions, such as Richmond’s Harold Steves, West Vancouver’s Craig Cameron and Mary-Ann Booth and Port Coquitlam’s dynamic Brad West.

This post is a call to readers to direct me and the rest of us to any comments that municipal politicians have made over the past few years that reveal they were clearly taking a stand for local residents over foreign capital.

If readers could send me relevant quotes and links I would be happy to publish some them. Reply in the comments section below, or with an email to dtodd@postmedia.com


(For now I’m focussing on the public record of municipal politicians, not provincial or federal ones, even though they have much more power in regards to housing and related policy. The federal Liberals under Justin Trudeau have been lacklustre on housing, to say the least. The B.C. Liberals were a disaster, and the jury is out on the B.C. NDP.)

All in all, Robertson was not unique among local politicians in downplaying the dangers of foreign capital in his earlier years in office. In Hong Kong in 2013 he said wealthy Chinese were not helping drive up prices in Vancouver.

He began to speak out by 2015, when he asked former premier Christy Clark to do something about “unwarranted speculation” by “the world’s wealthiest citizens” in Vancouver real estate. In response Clark threw cold water on the mayor’s plea to curb offshore speculation, suggesting it wasn’t significant.

Robertson also boldly acknowledged the problem to The Sun’s Dan Fumano in November when he said foreign capital had hit the city of Vancouver “like a ton of bricks.”

(A note regarding the word, ‘scapegoat.’ I am using it in the way it has been developed by philosopher Rene Girard. He suggested a scapegoat is a person “who appears guilty or responsible” when the reality is the person may be either innocent, or in most cases, just partly responsible (like Robertson) for a community’s sins. Furthermore, Girard said a community’s collective guilt cannot be assuaged by ritually sacrificing one person or thing, the way ancient tribes would, for instance, sacrifice a goat to the gods. Girard’s work delves into orthodox Christian theology, but that’s a topic for another day.)



MORE RELATED: Douglas Todd: Vancouver’s housing crisis revealed by looking to China, Australia, New Zealand





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