transit

Candidates in Victoria

Tony Yacowar (PR photo)

Tony Yacowar will be vying for a seat on the Victoria city council this Oct. 15. Among his stated priorities, if elected, are affordable housing, addressing climate change and amalgamation within the Greater Victoria region.

Housing in Victoria, as in Metro Vancouver, is a primary concern among residents. Yacowar hopes to help pass the “Missing Middle Initiative,” a long-debated but deferred policy that he says would make it easier to add more housing units to areas of the city that have been traditionally residential.

“Victoria has an urgent housing crisis and we need leadership that will articulate a cohesive vision for the city in order to build the housing we need. We have an immediate deficit of between 4,500 and 6,300 homes. People need places to live. This impacts absolutely every aspect of city life. The healthcare crisis in this province is exacerbated by the fact that doctors and nurses can’t find places to live. We all want safe communities to live in and, if we aren’t able to provide housing to folks experiencing homelessness, we aren’t able to have safe communities for the long term,” Yacowar said.

“Gentle densification of our residential neighbourhoods is an important aspect of how we are going to accommodate the next generation of doctors and nurses, small business owners, artists and young professionals. Folks at all income levels need places to live. Missing Middle is not the solution to the affordability crisis, but it is the solution to the question of ‘where are these folks going to live?’”

Further, Yacowar would like to build density around the Douglas Street Corridor, the main thoroughfare linking the Victoria’s downtown and uptown, to support light rail transit. According to Yacowar, there is a strong connection between more homes and better transit in terms of reducing a city’s carbon footprint overall.

Yacowar is also pressing for amalgamation. “We need a cohesive vision for our city and we can’t have each municipality doing its own thing,” he said. “A city of 245,000 would be better able to advocate for more support from senior levels of government when it comes to housing and transit than a city of 91,000.”

A certified public accountant who is currently the chief financial officer at Royal Mountain Records, Yacowar regards having no prior involvement in politics as an advantage.

“I think it’s important to have a diverse set of views and backgrounds on council,” he said. “We don’t often get accountants in politics and I think there is a real benefit to having someone at the table with the kind of organizational and financial background that a CPA would bring, as well as someone representing the Jewish and LGBTQ communities. Quite often we have career politicians and bureaucrats running for office, but our democracy is at its best when we have folks of diverse backgrounds bringing different points of view to the table.”

photo - Ben Isitt — Ben Isitt *(PR photo)*

Of the eight present councilors in Victoria, only one, Ben Isitt, is seeking reelection. Five councilors elected in 2018 are stepping down and two are running for mayor. Isitt, too, identifies as a member of the Jewish community.

Isitt has served as a city councillor and regional director since 2011. His short bio on the City of Victoria website notes that he is an author, historian and legal scholar, who has taught at the University of Victoria and other institutions. It notes: “Ben’s involvement in civic politics builds from grassroots volunteer work for social and ecological justice, in support of worker rights, climate action, Indigenous rights, non-violence, the abolition of poverty and racism, and protection of forests and farmland. Ben’s research on housing, land use, forestry and public education reflect this community-based approach, as does his hands-on experience as a former housing support worker with Victoria’s street community.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Transit is a Jewish issue

For most Jewish-related services – cultural events, organizational meetings, day schools, high school, camps, Jewish social services – travel is required. (photo by Arnold C via commons.wikimedia.org)

Although there are multiple levels of government in Canada, it is often said, there is only one taxpayer. So it is frustrating to see necessary public policy delayed by intergovernmental squabbling.

This is what’s happening right now with plans for the future of transportation in Metro Vancouver. A year ago, area voters rejected a referendum proposal that would have seen increased taxes to fund better transit. Stagnation has been the status of transit policy since then.

In the budget tabled in March, the federal government ponied up $370 million for transit in the region.

Last week, the provincial government announced $246 million over a three-year period to improve bus and SeaBus service, purchase more SkyTrain cars and launch “initial work towards new major rapid transit in Vancouver and Surrey.”

The provincial minister in charge of TransLink, Peter Fassbender, said he expects Metro Vancouver municipalities to raise $124 million more, for a total of $740 million over three years.

Mayors of Metro municipalities have a grander scheme – to the tune of $7.5 billion over 10 years, which they would see funded through transit fare and property tax hikes, the sale of some TransLink property and more tolls on bridges and roads.

In this space, we are more accustomed to taking on manageable issues like Middle East peace rather than the seemingly intractable difficulties of moving residents of Metro Vancouver from one part of the region to another. But the issue of transportation is having serious ramification for Metro Vancouverites and things will only get worse if something nearly revolutionary doesn’t happen soon.

This has already had and will continue to have specific implications for ethnocultural communities, including the Jewish community. Real estate realities have driven successive generations of Jewish community members out of the erstwhile “Jewish neighborhood” of Oakridge, the heydays of which will be recalled in an upcoming exhibit of the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia.

Reflecting trends that transcend cultural boundaries, home buyers have moved in concentric circles in recent decades, outward from the city proper, first across the bridges to Richmond and the North Shore, then further east and south. Nearly half – 46% – of Metro Vancouver’s Jews now live outside the city limits, with recent years having seen notable increases in the Jewish populations of Surrey/White Rock, the Tri-Cities and the areas of Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows and Langley. While there are nodes of Jewish life in each of these locations, there is no doubt that, for most Jewish-related services – cultural events, organizational meetings, day schools, high school, camps, Jewish social services – travel is required.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver has long recognized the particular challenges of providing services to and maintaining cohesion among a community spread across a large geographic space. A recent effort, Connect Me In, is surveying Jewish British Columbians who live outside Vancouver and asking how the communal umbrella agency can serve their needs.

Federation is trying to provide services to people where they live so that it is less necessary to come “into the city.” Yet even the best laid plans well executed cannot erase the barriers of time and space between, say, Squamish and 41st and Oak. Moreover, the delivery of services where Jewish people live will still require some movement … from the core outward.

Maintaining cohesion within our community in such a situation depends both on the ability of our community agencies to respond to the needs, as well as the desire of suburbanites to maintain connection to the Jewish community. It also depends, in ways we should not underestimate, on the simple ability to move from Point A to Point B in the Lower Mainland. Transit is a Jewish issue.