Political Junkie

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Vancouver's newest city councillors were sworn in at the Creekside Community centre Monday amid promises from Robertson that he would focus resources on housing and homelessness. 

"In a city as prosperous as Vancouver, nobody should be forced to sleep outside on our streets," he said. 

Robertson said he will strike a task force on housing affordability that will identify ways to increase Vancouver's supply of affordable homes.

The mayor also recommitted his promise to end street homelessness by 2015.

In 1991, I had the pleasure of running Darlene Marzari’s re-election campaign in Vancouver Point Grey. A pleasure because it was a fantastic campaign full of great people who worked hard to re-elect the best representative Point Grey ever had. 

And it paid off. On election night, Darlene finished far ahead of the closest challenger, beating the BC Liberal by 13 points.

But that wasn’t the story the BC Liberals told a local newspaper. The weekend before the election, the Liberal campaign provided the paper with a poll that predicted a healthy BC Liberal win in Point Grey.      

The poll was a fake of course. The Liberals had just scribbled the results they wanted on a piece of paper and handed it to the reporter. The reporter almost printed them, until I reminded him that I too could cough up a nice looking fake poll that said exactly what I wanted and offered to do so on the spot. My offer wasn't taken up, but the paper declined the Liberal’s as well.