Vancouver’s NPA president defends party amid bullying allegations

Share

The president of Vancouver's once-dominant, centre-right civic party says the NPA remains a strong organization with lots of support, despite losing control of the city's park board when a delegate quit the team and accused her colleagues of bullying behaviour.

Non-Partisan Association president Carling Dick said Erin Shum's decision to quit the team and support a Green Party member for chair of the board came as a surprise. Ms. Shum's move means that the party has now lost control of two civic boards it had wrested away from Vision Vancouver in the last election.

The shake-up Monday came after Ms. Shum, a 33-year-old first-term park commissioner, announced she couldn't work with the NPA any more because of the way caucus members scolded her for not voting with the group. She nominated Green Party commissioner Michael Wiebe as chair, a position he won with the support of the board's second Green Party member and the Vision Vancouver representative.

Ms. Shum was chosen as the board's vice-chair.

"We were surprised and disappointed with commissioner Shum's decision," said Ms. Dick, who works with the lobbying firm Earnscliffe. "We want to continue to do good things for the city."

Mr. Wiebe said he woke up Monday morning with no expectation that he, a first-term commission who is only 35, would end the day as chair.

But Ms. Shum had begun approaching Vision commissioner Catherine Evans on Sunday to see whether she would support a change in the leadership at the board, after deciding she couldn't work with the NPA any more.

"I took a stand because I thought 'I'm so done with the bullying,'" said Ms. Shum. She said that when she spoke out against fee increases at community centres last year, her two senior colleagues, John Coupar and Sarah Kirby-Yung, took her out and reprimanded her for more than an hour for not being a team player.

The NPA also lost control of the leadership of the school board last year, when Green Party trustee Janet Fraser shifted her support for the chair position from an NPA trustee to a Vision Vancouver trustee. The entire board has since been fired by the provincial government.

The unexpected change at the park board comes as the organization is facing decisions on two major issues.

One is what to do about having whales and other cetaceans at the Vancouver Aquarium, an issue that has moved to the front burner after the aquarium's two whales died of mysterious causes within days of each other last month.

The other issue is how to proceed with the joint-operating agreement that the board has been trying to establish with the city's 22 community centres.

That has been an unresolved battle for four years, one that helped lead to Vision Vancouver's loss of control of the board in the last election.

The Vision board had insisted that there needed to be a different agreement to ensure that all Vancouver residents had equal access to all community centres and to make sure that the revenue among them was shared between wealthier and less wealthy centres.

The board led by the NPA the last two years continued to work on establishing that agreement and staff had recently presented a draft.

Mr. Wiebe and Ms. Shum said they are looking forward to taking a different approach to both those issues from that of the NPA-controlled board.

"This will be a great opportunity for Michael and I to work together," said Ms. Shum. "The direction will be more transparent and I think it will inspire staff."

Mr. Wiebe said he believes the board, under its new leadership, can also develop a more positive relationship with the city than was the case under the NPA, which he said was too partisan and had a more oppositional approach.

"They had kind of wrecked the relationship with the city," he said. "I talked to the mayor already about strengthening the relationships between the two."