GVPOD - Greater Vancouver's Business Podcast

Greater Vancouver Board of Trade President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson is joined by Mustel Group Founder Evi Mustel and Earnscliffe Strategies Principal Anna Lilly to discuss the top issues in the upcoming municipal elections in Metro Vancouver.

What is GVPOD - Greater Vancouver's Business Podcast?

GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.

0:00:00.0 S1: [Bridgitte] Well, hello again, and welcome to GVPOD - Greater Vancouver’s Business Podcast exploring the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. This is the final episode in our Municipal Election series. I've been speaking with Vancouver mayoral candidates for the last few weeks, but today we're going to pivot a bit and talk about the issues that businesses, individuals and politicians are focused on in the election. We have once again partnered with the Mustel group to survey the community, and today I'm joined by Mustel Group President Evi Mustel and Earnscliffe Strategy Principal Anna Lilly to talk about these results. Welcome both of you. Nice to see you. [Evi and Anna] Thank you to... [Bridgitte] So this is gonna be a little bit like air traffic control, I think with two people on a podcast, but I'm up for it. So let's start with the key election issues for businesses that came out of the survey, so permitting, licensing and red tape and Evi I will start with you. Who are you pulling, exactly and what other kinds of questions were you asking them?

0:01:09.7 S2: [Evi] Well, we actually surveyed three different groups, which made the survey interesting because we could compare the results from the three groups, so we started with the sample of Metro Vancouver random sample and Metro Vancouver adults – Greater Vancouver Board of Trade members representing the business community and current mayors, counselors and candidates in the upcoming election. In terms of the survey itself, it wasn't a horse race poll, it was much more focused on issues. So we started off the survey with what are the key issues that are impacting how people intend to vote in the upcoming election, and then we did a deeper dive in each of those issues such as housing, transportation, taxes and spending.

0:01:52.3 S1: [Bridgitte] So there's obviously a lot for us to talk about here, and I'm gonna start with affordable housing, Anna, because it was named as the most important municipal issue by the general population as well as the politicians, and it is an issue that our own members have talked to us over and over and over again, impacting employer's ability to attract and retain talent and general affordability in the region, and we now have a significant campaign announcement by David Eby talking about a flipping tax and it also changes to secondary sweet, so pretty significant in what he's... Talking about his approach to being able to solve some of the housing issues, do you feel like the municipal candidates really focused much on this and are reflective of the sort of urgency that we're hearing around affordability - housing issues in the region.

[Anna] Yeah, well, as we record this, we're within just hours of David Eby, basically the premier in waiting, I think many would say, having made that announcement that you referenced, and it's very interesting timing because we're a couple of weeks away from a municipal election, a big part of what he has announced affects municipalities, and he said for some months now, he is going to bring in some form of incentive or perhaps some legislation, perhaps some punitive action against municipalities who are not moving quickly enough to approve new housing developments and particularly affordable housing.

0:03:26.0 S1: So it will be very interesting to see how the different campaigns react to this, in our survey, we actually asked about this and saw that across businesses, politicians and the public, there was an appetite for this, clearly what's been going on hasn't been working. People, whether they're at the local, provincial or federal level, I think voters are thinking they're not doing enough to deal with this affordable housing crisis, so the fact that Mr. Eby has come forward with this proposal,

sort of in the heat of this campaign, I think it's gonna force candidates to talk about how they would respond to that if they get into office.

[Bridgitte] Certainly at the municipal level, there are levers that can be pulled to deal with some of the affordability issues in housing, like licensing and permitting zoning, those kinds of things, not licensing, permitting and zoning rather. But maybe I'll take a step back and just get your overall reaction to the pull itself, as I said, there's a lot of medi issues to delve into, and we will... But Evi, I will start with you on this. Was there anything that was a big surprise for you?

0:04:38.2 S2: [Evi] I think what surprised me is because we're hearing a lot in the media that neighborhoods have been very anti-development in their neighborhoods or accept new developments, and our survey actually found that - No, they are... They're very open to having more multiple-family housing in the neighborhoods, it's just... I think where the gap or where the disconnect is, is in terms of the type of housing that's being proposed, they feel we need to prioritize rental over condos and also housing that's affordable housing, social housing or the below income housing... Not owned condo. So I think that's where the... They accept that type of housing, and they also, at the same time, they wanna make sure that the infrastructure is in place to handle that increased population in the neighborhood, things they're not seeing that transportation is... Public transit in just the road network is keeping up with the increased population in the neighborhoods.

0:05:38.7 S1: [Bridgitte] Anna what about you when you took a look at the results initially, what stood out for you?

[Anna] Well, unaffordable housing in particular, it's striking how much voters are really dissatisfied with municipal governments when arguably it should be provincial or federal governments who should bear the brunt of responsibility on that, but we're seeing in the survey that both affordable housing being the key issue and the area where people feel local governments have really fallen down, perform the worst over the last four years, and I think that means that increasingly the public is seeing local government is the road block to getting more affordable housing, whether that's fair or not. And then just in terms of other issues that surprise me that came through in the results, I was a good surprise to see that the environment and climate change really fell away as a major area of concern for the public compared to previous surveys that we've done. On the flip side though, local politicians were telling us they're still very concerned and very focused on this issue, the other thing that struck me was the level of pessimism that exists across the board in the region, whether that's voters or the public or businesses, about what the next few years holds in terms of our quality of life, we've come through a really tough time with the pandemic, there's a lot of big difficult issues going on in the world, and yet here at home, we're seeing that play out in terms of a real feeling that there's some tough times still had for us here in Metro Vancouver.

0:07:12.0 S1: [Bridgitte] Yeah, and maybe I'll just pick up on that and What could future councils take away from that pessimism, because it was a bit of a surprise that quite a few people who just were not feeling very positive about affordability and quality of life, so as they're heading people are heading to the polls to put their vote in, and we're dealing with new councils in October. What can be learned here?

[Anna] Well, I'd say, Bridgitte, the issues that really are relevant to quality of life or some of the issues that local politicians have been talking about in their campaigns, or they have proposals for-whether that's affordability, it could be traffic congestion, it could be crime, those all showed up as

big issues for the public, and they really are about how we live in our neighborhoods, how we get around, do we feel safe? I think those all sort of ladder up to quality of life, and what the public saying is local governments, you have to do more on these issues, and I think dig a bit deeper. I think voters are looking to politicians in the selection to offer up real solutions, proposals that are concrete.

0:08:29.7 S1: I don't think this is an election about who can you trust or personalities or experience, this is about What are you gonna bring... Can you get that done in your local council to bring forward your solutions, and how quickly can that happen because people are getting increasingly impatient, so I'm not surprised to see the degree of anxiety that's showing up once you think about how people are really sort of experiencing some of those quality-of-life issues close to home

[Bridgitte] An interesting level asked about whether community members... So asking the community members whether they believe that the municipal politicians were on the right track or wrong track, only 25% indicated on the right track, and that was compared to 39% in 2018, so Evi what can we parse from this, where are these municipal leaders getting off-track.

0:09:31.1 S2: [Evi] Well, we know the key issues, as we know affordable housing being number one, transportation public transit, crime public safety and homeliness being the other three issues. Concerns about those issues has increased since our last Municipal election..last Municipal polling at all of them except transportation - that's always been an issue. So the fact that the level of concern has increased shows that these... The actions that the city council and mayors have been taken to date haven’t been addressing those issues, so it really, really go hand-in-hand with them being really on the wrong track.

0:10:11.6 S1: [Bridgitte] What do you feel were some of the clear messages from the business community around permitting, licensing and red tape, it's something that at the Board of Trade, we hear about, whether we're talking about civic life or we're talking about at the federal or provincial level, those kinds of barriers to getting business done is a real challenge for businesses, and they're saying that these are really key issues for those municipal issues coming up in the election...

0:10:41.0 S2: [Evi] Yeah, without a doubt... the general public would have that same experience the business does with the red tape or licensing, unless they're doing a home renovation or building or something, so they don't have the same experience, but after red tape and permitting, really the businesses show the same concerns the public does with housing and transportation because their ability to try to retain their plays is being affected by the same issues, and we saw that we have over half population are still considering moving away, and we believe there certainly has been quite a shift. I mean fortunately our immigration levels are high, that they are replacing, those people are moving, but businesses as well are relocating to other areas because it’s just very, very difficult for them to do business.

0:11:27.8 S1: [Bridgitte] That's such an important point Evi because I think that there has been at times a perception that the business community has different priorities than general population, but this has come very clear in these survey results, there's a lot of alignment and there's things that municipalities can do to fix some of these problems.

[Evi] Yeah, absolutely

[Bridgitte] Anna I just wanna pick up on the difference in priorities though, 'cause this is something that stuck out for me, that when you looked at the different groups and the priorities, there was some real misalignment, if you will, amongst the groups, the way that they were ranking their priorities.

[Anna] Yeah I mean it's probably not too surprising that you would see that kind of divergence, but you're right, there was quite a lot of consensus around affordability, transportation crime as key issues, you were talking about businesses concerned about red tape and the slow processes for getting permit approvals - that was the number one issue for businesses, but if you look at what the politician said, only 11% who we surveyed said they're concerned about their government supporting the economy or becoming more business-friendly, so that's an area in particular where I think the business community is gonna really have to continue putting on a lot of pressure. For voters, the issues that they care about most, as I said, are all wrapped up in a quality of life, and those showed up also for local politicians, but we also saw the politicians saying they were quite concerned about infrastructure and planning for growth.

0:13:05.5 S1: I think we all kind of understand that we're expecting another what, one million people to come to the region over the next 20 years, so municipal governments are very attuned to that challenge, so it doesn't surprise me that the politicians would be talking about things like infrastructure. Our region, the Metro Vancouver, is facing a real infrastructure deficit, if our population continues, the fast-paced growth that we're on and we don't keep up in delivering the core services that are needed to support that, we're gonna be in trouble. And right now, Metro Vancouver's looking to provincial and federal governments to help fund billions of dollars in new infrastructure, whether that's water or waste water transit, other infrastructure projects, and local politicians have been working behind the scenes to try and secure that senior government support for these projects, and it's a huge challenge, but the public's not really tuned into that, and I think it comes back to... the public sees these issues of growth and being able to handle growth in all of those sort of day-to-day experiences that they have: driving to work, are they getting stuck in congestion, can they afford or can their children afford a home? What they're not seeing is, as I say, this very big looming issue around infrastructure that could come back to bite us.

[Bridgitte] And I just think about what some of the survey results say just about engaging with local government, it's harder to do business with local government than it has been in the past five years and the experience itself hasn't been particularly helpful, there's some big learning here, Evi for future councils.

0:14:53.2 S2: [Evi] Yeah, without a doubt. We did finish the survey off with the number of questions I mean among businesses as well as politicians, what they felt needed to change, and they do agree, they do accept that they still have a long ways to go in terms of reducing property and redtape to make it easier for businesses to business in the city, Also something we hadn't really expected, they talked a lot about increasing their partnerships with other levels of government, they really know they need to focus on that much more and that is something Anna said too...In terms of some of the infrastructure requirements, it isn't just a municipal issue, it is really all three levels of government, so that's something that the city and counselors and mayors are really starting to recognize that they really need to develop those connections with other levels of government.

0:15:50.3 S1: [Bridgitte] Exactly. Now there's... The collaboration is key to be able to get that funding. Anna I think about what voter turnout is like for any election, and it tends to be fairly low

by all regards, but if you look at municipal elections, the voter turnout is really very... It's low and it gets lower every election cycle, and so I think what has come through for me in this survey is just how local government impacts daily life, whether you are a business or an individual, but how do we drive that message forward?

[Anna] Yeah, it's a great point, and it can be a little depressing to see the turnout results or numbers after a local election. As somebody who follows local government very closely, it always mystified me 'cause I'm always voting... But it's difficult, I think, for local governments to get the same kind of attention on their issues and citizen engagement, certainly when... If you turn on the news, so many of the issues that occupy our minds these days are global, national or provincial in nature, I mean healthcare being an example, we didn't ask about healthcare in this survey because we were talking about local government, but I think if you were to ask folks, just at large, what are some of the key issues we're facing in BC that would show up.

0:17:22.7 S1: So the quality of life issues that a local government is responsible for are absolutely the things that touch people in their communities every single day, but it's not surprising that local governments aren't necessarily top of mind when you ask people about exercising their democratic rights. I think we'll see actually a good turnout of voters in areas where this time around, the campaigns are really interesting, certainly Vancouver, five candidates duking it out there, there's probably more for mayor and in Surrey, Surrey is another place where you've got a very interesting Mayoral race, and that's getting a lot of attention. I think there's a lot of the voters in Syria that are really looking hard at those choices because you've got so many strong candidates, so those kinds of... The kind of visibility that some of those campaigns generate, I think will drive some voters to the ballot box, maybe even some people that haven't voted in a local election before.

[Bridgitte] Yeah, and I would say that over the last two and a half, three years at the pandemic, there has been more focused on local government, particularly around some of the issues in Vancouver, around revitalizing the downtown core, public safety and crime, but also more attention and there are some very exciting races and some very clear choices that voters are gonna have to make, so we only have a couple of minutes left, but I'm gonna give you a chance to have your key plug...

0:19:00.7 S1: Mine is get out and vote. I just could not say that more strongly that October 15th is your opportunity to have your voices heard and to think about those... They're all laid out very clearly. And understanding voting for Mayor and Counselors, and so that you're voting for different teams too, so to be able to do the research to understand that, but I'll give you both a chance to have your last say in a take away for any future councils. Anna I'll start with you and I'll finish up with you Evi.

[Anna] I think my message to councils, and it comes back to something we saw in the survey, and you mentioned, both of you mentioned, is don't forget about looking beyond your community to those partnerships and forming the relationships and driving your agenda with provincial and federal governments. There has not been the same kind of policy alignment between a federal, provincial and many local governments in B.C. in recent memory - if you look at who's in power right now and the priorities that they have, whether it's housing or the environment or health care, there's a lot of alignment right now, and has been for a few years.

0:20:17.3 S1: Local governments really have to push hard to get investments from those senior

levels of government now, because elections are coming and we could see change in leadership at those different levels of government, and maybe the alignment won't be there next time.

[Bridgitte] Evi I will let you have the last word.

0:20:36.0 S2: [Evi] Yeah, I think I'm, as to your comment I am mystified too why voter turnout is so low because when you think back 10, 20 years ago of municipal politics used to be quite sleepy. Any public hearing usually goes on for a couple of nights, so people are engaged in the issues, are showing up for public hearings, and I think that's as soon as they have sort of an issue - that's a lightning bolt. It draws people out, but I think one of the suggestions I came from the mayors and councilors themselves, I think, which is good advice, is just to start doing more face-to-face neighborhood meetings with the counselors and mayors, and just more engagement throughout and community planning rather than just waiting for some big hot issue to media and to drop people up and just continue that engagement ongoing 24/7 rather than just waiting for what the issue to worry is.

0:21:32.4 S1: [Bridgitte] That's great. Thank you, both of you and I think if I do one last call to action here is for future councils to recognize the alignment between the business community and individuals, particularly around the ease of doing business with the local government and just getting rid of those barriers and the red tape, and really understanding the cost that adds to businesses and individuals as well. Thank you, Anna and Evi, it's been a real pleasure to work with you on this survey, I really appreciate your time and again, get out and vote on October 15th.

[Anna and Evi] Thank you Bridgitte