07) TROUBLED WATERS FOR VANCOUVER'S COPE
By Kimball Cariou
Divisions within Canada's longest-established progressive civic party appear wider in the wake of an acrimonious annual meeting in early April. For the first time, a factional group opposed to the traditional left-centre unity strategy of Vancouver's Coalition of Progressive Electors is in full control of the organization.
The situation has sparked serious concerns in the labour movement, and also within COPE-ED, the party's committee of public education activists. Since the Vancouver and District Labour Council (VDLC) and some of its affiliates - including unions in the education sector - have long been the largest financial and organizational backers of COPE, it appears possible that the party could be seriously weakened heading into the November 2014 municipal elections.
COPE was founded in 1969 at a conference sponsored by the VDLC's civic affairs committee. The new party brought together the labour movement and progressive civic forces led by radical lawyer Harry Rankin, with the goal of challenging decades of "Non-Partisan Alliance" big business control of Vancouver city hall, school board, and parks board.
A wide range of activists and movements quickly came on board, and within several years, COPE began electing Rankin and other city councillors and school trustees. During the mid-1980s, COPE won majorities on the Vancouver School Board, and worked with Mayor Mike Harcourt and his supporters to form a de facto majority on Council. A key figure at the time was city councillor Bruce Yorke, a Communist Party member who helped COPE win support across the city with his measures to achieve municipal taxation equity.
After a subsequent period of setbacks, COPE began electing candidates again in 1999, and then swept the field in the 2002 campaign. Unfortunately, the "big tent" of forces united under the COPE banner soon collapsed. Within two years, several COPE city councillors formed the new Vision Vancouver party. A centrist group which advanced environmental ("green capitalist") policies, Vision was also backed by important property developers.
That bitter experience led some members to form their own permanent faction within COPE, arguing that Vision had become the worst enemy of working people in Vancouver. Most COPE members took a different position, voting in 2005, 2008 and 2011 to support joint COPE-Vision electoral slates with the aim of defeating the right-wing NPA. This centre-left unity strategy was strongly backed by the VDLC, the Communist Party, and most civic New Democrats.
But this approach, while it resulted in some electoral successes for COPE, left Vision in the driver's seat. The new party won big victories in 2008 and 2011, while COPE elected just one candidate (long-time school trustee Alan Wong) in the latter campaign. Without a strong COPE presence at City Hall, Vision tilted further in a pro-developer direction, while still trying to maintain its environmentalist credentials. Since the era of electoral cooperation ended in 2011, COPE's executive has become even more critical of Vision's policies, except at the school board level where the Vision majority takes progressive positions.
Meanwhile, the ever-growing divide between rich and poor in Vancouver has generated increasing anger, especially in the poverty-stricken Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Much of that anger has been directed, however, not at right-wing federal and provincial governments, or against the big corporations, but instead at the Vision-dominated city council, which has failed to live up to its progressive image on key issues.
Taking advantage of this justifiable backlash, the faction led by former city councillor Tim Louis has gained strength within COPE, especially since the 2011 election. Bizarrely accusing leading COPE members of being "neoliberals" (including Communists and left-minded NDPers), the Louis group won a decisive majority on the executive at the April 7 AGM.
That meeting also narrowly adopted a resolution stating that COPE will nominate a mayoralty candidate and majority slates at all levels in 2014. While the resolution is clearly against COPE's constitution, it does signal that the new executive is determined to run an all-out campaign next year, even if this opens the door for an NPA comeback.
Such a scenario is particularly troubling for the municipal trade union movement, especially the civic inside and outside workers represented by CUPE. These CUPE members have vivid memories of being locked out by a reactionary NPA mayor and council back in 2007, and their unions will reject any strategy which could bring back the NPA. Similarly, the teachers' unions which have worked closely with COPE-ED for years are reportedly appalled at the prospect of an NPA-led school board after the next election.
The single-minded focus of the new COPE executive on the Downtown Eastside is another huge departure from the organization's traditional strategy of building support across the city. By aligning with forces which condemn the trade union movement, the Louis group may win cheers from some anti-poverty activists. But the negative response to tactics such as smashing restaurant windows indicates that, far from winning support to build more low-income housing, the "new" direction may leave COPE isolated in the 2014 campaign.
Eighteen months remain before that election, and another COPE AGM will take place next spring. But at this point, it appears that many long-time COPE supporters are sitting things out, exhausted by endless struggles against the determined sectarian group which has taken control. Under these circumstances, the COPE vote may well collapse in 2014 to its "core" levels of perhaps 20,000, far below the 50,000-plus needed to elect candidates in Vancouver.
If that happens, can COPE survive this difficult internal convulsion? Could another labour-backed, broad-based progressive civic reform movement emerge? These are questions which many COPE activists are debating, but so far there are few answers.
(The above article is from the May 16-31, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)