MARC EMERY:
My Manifesto for the City of Vancouver
November 8th, 2008
I’m frustrated with my campaign to become Mayor of Vancouver. Unless you are Peter Ladner or Gregor Robertson, you do not get any serious opportunities to offer up useful ideas to manage the Corporation of the City of Vancouver.
So far I’ve been to a “speed-dating” style candidate meeting in a bar, where you get two minutes to meet different groups and answer their questions, though all that really needs discussion is plans for managing $2,600,000,000 the Corporation of Vancouver will spend in the Mayor’s next term (between 2009 to 2011; the 2008 budget is $850,000,000+).
Then at the Last-Candidate Standing farce of a Friday evening, a panel of the neighbourhood’s media drew names from a lottery and then “voted off” candidates. My name was pulled, and I got asked “What is your favorite place to get a drink on Friday night?” I remarked that, in lieu of the next Mayor being in office during the worst business downturn in 50 years “I don’t give a Goddamn about where to get a good drink on a Friday night”, and furthermore I implored my audience that we need to have the urgent discussion on what the city’s priorities ought to be in the very sobering financially uncertain future. The media panel voted me off the island and I never got a chance to talk again. Even though the crowd erupted in long and loud “boooos” and chanted “recount”, the organizers didn’t care. They hit the gong – literally, there was a “Mistress of the Gong” – and I lost any chance to speak further on the important issues Vancouver faces.
Next, I am due to give a 5-minute performance at the Creative City Caberet. I committed to doing a rendition of the scene from Monty Python & The Holy Grail where Arthur meets up with the peasant; it’s a great scene, and perhaps my favorite scene ever. But I can’t do it. I’m not running to be Court Jester. The job I’m applying for is to be Mayor of Vancouver in a time of imminent and dire crisis. I’ll bomb tonight, I’m sure, but the only thing I’ve ever really been good at before an audience is telling them uncomfortable truths.
Vancouver’s Future: The Frightening Truth
I haven’t met a single voter who cares about my issues, my perspective or asks my questions, so I am truly a gadfly this election. In the next three years, Vancouver will face an economic contraction, collapse, recession, that is unprecedented in the last 50 years. Construction activity will dry up in 2009 and more so in 2010. Retail stores will be closing in large numbers after this Christmas, and many businesses here have begun substantial lay-offs that will worsen in the winter and spring ahead. Rising unemployment, homelessness, business closings, will see greater pressure on charities, Food Banks, the Salvation Army. In the next two years, the auto industry, forestry, construction, retail, restaurants will all be suffering terrible reductions in activity. This means dramatically less tax revenues to the federal government, the province and city, as great a reduction in tax revenues as we have ever seen perhaps.
The perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances will batter this Boomtown. The Olympics are here in 15 months, and it couldn’t be worse timing. That will be the trough of the recession, the worst part. Revenue to the Olympics will be much less than anticipated, while Olympic over-runs are legacies guaranteed by the taxpayers of Vancouver and British Columbia. It will impact on the City’s budget perhaps up to $40 to $50 million dollars. The budget over-runs that Vancouver taxpayers are on the hook for is ominous and looming. The cost of one Olympic legacy project, the Trout Lake Ice Rink Replacement Project, has more than tripled, saddling Vancouver taxpayers with more than $10 million in extra costs. As a result, a community centre replacement has been put on hold. The City has also set aside a $20 Million Olympic Legacy Reserve, which is funding Olympic lights and Olympic banners. $20 million for banners and lights? Luxuries, surely.
Let’s Get Serious: What We Need To Do
We should have a discussion on where the city can make up such a shortfall in revenue, but no one I’ve met wants to. No one wants to talk about what’s really happening – all I can find are voters who want their pet project (cheaper transit passes, bicycle lanes, off-leash dog parks, more subsidized housing, etc.) promised.
We need to talk about priorities. What can we cut back? Are there expenditures that are contrary to the mandate of a city government? Should the City of Vancouver use taxpayer money to behave as a commercial investment banker, lending $100 million dollars to the Millenium development on False Creek (that’s $2,000 for each citizen of Vancouver)? Sure, we’re supposed to get that money back, but how did the Vancouver taxpayer end up being the bank of next resort?
The police budget is more than $180,000,000 a year. That’s $3,800 to policing today from each person in Vancouver each year. We’re told by statistics that crime is way down in every area – except marijuana cases – over the last 5 years and over the last 30 years, yet each year the police want more big money for more cops. I think we need to look at where this city has been going with respect to a massive invasion of our privacy and liberty at great financial cost to those very taxpayers whose privacy and liberty are being impacted. In 14 months from now, according the November 10th Vancouver Sun, Vancouver city will have 12,350 police, military, and private security guards in the city during the Olympics in February 2010. Can anyone imagine what that will be like?
There will be video cameras on our streets starting next year. I have heard no debate or expression of the need for street video cameras during this campaign. Yet in London, England, they have installed several hundred thousand cameras throughout the city, requiring thousands of monitors to view them all. The job is typically so dull that they have found that monitors tend to focus on pretty women, possibly sexual activity, and other matters not related to crime. The videotapes are not high enough quality to be used in court, so what is the point? Social control. If we feel we’re always watched, we’ll always be anxious, nervous, controlled. That’s not what a free society is about – and, as I mentioned, crime is going down without these cameras anyway.
Vancouver has added a huge new police force to our community that has the full powers of criminal law under The Police Act: the BC Transportation Authority Police Service. They can arrest you anywhere in Vancouver. I know; I was pulled over, arrested, handcuffed and tossed in the back of a transit police vehicle because I had my front lights off on the vehicle I was driving down Pender St.
Vancouver and its surrounding municipalities are establishing these “safety teams” that have now unlimited power to get access to your home without a warrant, requiring only a hydro bill. They can come back whenever they want, fine you on the spot, evict you, order expensive repairs, report on your activities to police and City Hall – there are no limits on their power or who they report to.
What I see happening to Vancouver and cities in the lower mainland is economic calamity amidst a shocking escalation of surveillance, police presence, snoops, spies and a radical diminishment of privacy and quality of life. It’s going to be hard to party in February 2010 when we’re in the worst part of the worst economic slowdown in modern times, and while the City is under virtual martial law. And for what reason or purpose exactly? The only Olympic terrorist incident was in 1972 in Munich, Germany. The Montreal and Calgary Olympics had no security incidents (though Montreal had a billion dollar debt that might make Vancouver’s potential Olympic debt look modest) and neither did Olympics in China, Korea (Seoul) and the US (Los Angeles, Atlanta, Lake Placid, Salt Lake City). What is the impetus to spend these fantastic amounts on “safety” when no danger has been established? What happens to the battle tank the Vancouver Police has? Is this the first of many? Is this massive threat build-up the result of our military presence in Afghanistan? No one has asked me if Taser use by the Vancouver Police should be banned, but I would immediately suspend the use of Tasers if I were Mayor and on the Police Board. We need a real Civilian Oversight Authority with as much power to investigate and circumscribe rogue police actions as the Municipal Act allows.
When we think of places to cut back millions in the City budget without negatively affecting the delivery of essential services, I have yet to hear this discussion in the newspapers, at any candidates meetings, from any voter, from Peter Ladner or Gregor Robertson. But indeed, the next Mayor and Council will have to consider how to deal with radically diminished revenues. Any tax increases on businesses or homeowners in a time of diminished business, declining property values, increased unemployment, and other financial woes will be very negative to the recovery. Taxes will have to be frozen at current 2008 values during the recession. Therefore, tens of millions would need to be cut from the City budget. The City’s bond rating is likely to be reduced under this flurry of financial burdens, considering every municipality and government will be looking for more credit and borrowing. Vancouver’s high debt exposure and uncertainty is certain to raise interest rates on the City’s borrowing, and may make borrowing difficult.
Financial Cutbacks & Ending Prohibition
The City of Vancouver needs to reprioritize police resources; curtail or eliminate overtime in the police and civil service; reduce city workers’ pay by 2 to 5% (but with a no-layoff policy in return); raise user fees on athletic and recreational facilities; and sell off properties the City owns. There are many more possibilities, and they need to be talked about.
My only “radical” assertion as Mayor would be to unilaterally end drug prohibition. Prohibition is an extremely expensive and failed policy. It enriches crime gangs, taxes our police force, fuels property crimes against cars and homes, feeds the pawnshops with stolen goods, motivates addicted women to become prostitutes, lures young people into the drug trade, creates the conditions for gangland killings and violence, makes the situation of the mentally ill and homeless much worse, and damages our reputation with tourists because the drug problems look terrible.
Repealing prohibition and organizing a safe, taxed, regulated, and transparent drug distribution structure under the aegis of the City of Vancouver will immediately impact on crime gang activity, homelessness, property crime directed at tourist vehicles and local homes, prostitution, and street disorder and decay in the Downtown Eastside. With addicts and the mentally ill accessing clean, quantified drugs under supervised and regulated conditions, our ability to help them rebuild their lives will be greatly improved. They will no longer need to steal for drugs, and women will be able to exit street prostitution. Addicts who see that their drugs are available without crime or crime gangs will begin to re-establish themselves as potential employees and have a normalized daily lifestyle. Without the profits of illegal drugs, gangs will disintegrate and no longer be an attractive option for teenagers looking for lucrative money prospects.
This policy of repealing prohibition would contribute more to Vancouver’s safety, the civil rights of its citizens, the recovery of our downtown eastside, and a reduction in wasteful spending, than any suggestion I have seen proposed by any other candidate. More policing and law enforcement is not the answer. The federal government’s insistence on prohibition only assures that our city will see more crime and street disorder. Therefore, the mayor must act boldly and usurp this responsibility from federal politicians who, with their policy of prohibition, support organized crime.
The Vancouver Police Department is nearing the end of a four-year operational review and strategic plan. Each year VPD asks and gets more money. The 2007 City of Vancouver budget shows at page 23 that the VPD has increased its staffing levels by a whopping 18.6 percent since 2005. Police receive about 20 percent of the city property tax revenues. The 2007 budget for policing was $179 million. Unless the city unilaterally ends the prohibition, these policing costs will continue to escalate, and violence and crime caused by prohibition will continue – no matter how much taxpayer money the police budget gets. Prioritization is required. The choices are an expensive police state in dark economic times or a compassionate and rational assessment of our needs and solutions without fear-mongering and social control.
My Qualifications to be Mayor
• I have been a businessman for 38 years. My first retail catalog was issued January 1, 1971. I have been a downtown Vancouver businessman for 14 years, with up to 50 employees, supervising $3 - $5 million in sales each year. I currently employ 30 people.
• I have been a community activist for 29 years, since 1980. I have been instrumental in repealing two laws (The Sunday Shopping laws in 1988, the Banned literature laws in 1995) and financed the Canadian Supreme Court challenge to the Marijuana prohibition in 2003, which lost 6-3.
• I have been a publisher of community newspapers and magazines since 1981. I have been publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine since 1994 and publisher of POT.TV since 2000.
• I have been featured in a positive light in every major North American media, including a front-page portrait in The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 5, 1995), feature stories in Rolling Stone magazine, The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Economist, 60 Minutes (CBS Television), and numerous others. The documentary film by CBC called “The Prince of Pot: The US vs. Marc Emery” has a resume of my activist career.
• As leading industry spokesperson for the cannabis culture I have been responsible for bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to British Columbia since 1994, providing more wealth to this province than possible any other single individual. British Columbia’s marijuana industry is second largest in the province, and by 2010, will eclipse construction as the leading generator of income in the province.
• I have never declared bankruptcy or not paid a debt in 38 years of business. Despite being arrested 23 times, jailed 17 times and raided 6 times for my activism, I have been resilient enough to survive as a businessman and bounce back each time, learning important skills in survival and prudent money management. I know how to scale back spending to deal with emergency crises!
• I have raised 4 adopted children who lived with me from 1980 to 2001 (all on their own now) and know what it is like to raise children and provide for a family.
• I donated at least $3,500,000 to activist groups, individuals, organizations, symposiums, conferences, lobby groups, marches, rallies, in Vancouver and across the globe from 1994 to 2005, about $300,000 to $400,000 a year in that period.
Vancouver needs someone bold and brave as Mayor to ensure action is taken to protect our city from financial crisis. I’m not afraid to tell the truth and address the problems Vancouver faces today and in the future.
Support me in my run for Mayor.
Regards,
Marc Scott Emery
Marc@CannabisCulture.com
Office (604) 689-0590 / Home (604) 685-8260
Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters
307 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC, V6B 1H6
(604) 682-1172
www.MarcEmery.ca
www.NoExtradition.net
www.BCMarijuanaParty.ca
www.CannabisCulture.com
Marc Emery: Why I'm Running to be Mayor of Vancouver
Statement about my intention to run
September, 2008
Marc Scott Emery
Vancouver needs a progressive Mayor who does more than talk. Vancouver needs a Mayor who is going to implement progressive policy. This election will be about who can make it happen and how. I've got to hold Ladner & Robertson's feet to the fire in this upcoming municipal election, and I'm going to remind the candidates there are 50,000-80,000 cannabis users in Vancouver alone. There 300,000 cannabis users in the lower mainland, 8,000-12,000 grows to supply them, and over 5,000 dealers distributing the cannabis. These people can and will vote.
I'm tired of every election's establishment candidates of the NDP and Liberals or NPA and Vision Vancouver threaten to make more arrests, close more grows and give police "more resources" to harass the cannabis community with impunity. Collectively, the cannabis culture in British Columbia brings billions of dollars to their communities across BC. Seth Rogen, Vancouver's most famous movie star, is a 100% pothead who smokes pot in every show and hit movie he does. The cannabis culture has been the whipping boy for the law and order card, and I won't stand for it this election or any other.
Vancouver, BC... Best Place On Earth?
Prominent magazines and surveys assessing the most livable cities in the world frequently cite Vancouver as the best place to live. It's certainly true that Vancouver is proudly one of the most tolerant communities in the world, a city largely made up of immigrants who came to Vancouver from elsewhere to actualize their dreams of personal freedom, personal autonomy, and shared cultural communities.
The most important feature of any representative of the people of Vancouver is a respect for the individual liberty of the citizens who make our community so diverse and tolerant. The first mandate of any Vancouver Mayor then is tolerance for all the various cultures within Vancouver. The second requirement for legitimate representation is competence. The third requirement is a philosophical grounding in what government's legitimate role for the people is and not to exceed those boundaries. The legitimate representative offers forth restraint in dealing with the people's money, freedom, constitutional rights and property.
In the matters of competence, Vancouver had 3 1/2 weeks on 2 occasions in the last electoral period where residents couldn’t shower or drink the water. Vancouver had an appalling 4-month garbage strike. There was recently a 4-day power failure downtown. The 1.6 billion dollar elevated rapid transit to the airport is a colossal scam; the average resident of Vancouver goes the airport less than once every two years and a round-trip taxi ride is $56; and, the Convention Center is too late to stop but taxpayers are being exploited terribly by these massive welfare programs for business (the RAV line, the Olympics, etc.). All these projects have open-ended spending where the deficits fall hard on the taxpayer, and all of these projects are behind schedule and way over budget, as they always are!
The current contenders are Greg Robertson of Vision Vancouver, and Peter Ladner of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA). Gregor Robertson is touted as a successful businessman, but prior to his election in 2005 as MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, Happy Planet was not a particularly well-run company. It became successful only when the day-to-day operation was put in the hands of an experienced distribution company. In politics, Robertson has very few achievements. Though he belongs to some admirable public interest groups, his experience and accomplishments in business and politics are inadequate to make responsible for an $822-million budget. To put it in perspective, that's larger than the annual budget of four Canadian provinces!
Competence and experience aside, Mr. Robertson knows the marijuana community intimately; yet this is what appeared in a recent article in the Globe & Mail: "Mr. Robertson also said he would like to see the federal government legalize and tax marijuana. However until the law is changed, Vancouver police should have more resources to 'go after the grow-ops,' he said. 'There does need to be a real crackdown on grow ops and organized crime,' Mr. Robertson said, 'and police need resources and better co-ordination to do that.'"
Mr. Robertson has been around pot people for much of his life; he knows the vast majority of pot people growing in their home are fine people who pose no threat to the community. A hypocrite will make a disappointing leader of this city. Mr. Robertson seems like a nice fellow but, if he is selling out the marijuana people to pander to the law-and-order conservative voter, then I have an obligation to run on our culture's behalf.
NPA Mayoralty candidate Peter Ladner says on his web site that crime is the top concern of Vancouver residents. Yet prohibition, which Ladner has no election plans to endorse the repeal of, is the primary cause of crime in Vancouver, from gang shootings to street disorder to drug addiction to escalating police costs. Ending prohibition unilaterally at the city level is the only way that will successfully address the problems of "drug use". Candidate Ladner has been a councilor of the majority NPA for three years yet his resume lists not one single substantial initiative or accomplishment of the last 3 years on City Council. Ladner's short-of-inspiring vision for the city – ending public urination, graffiti, overflowing dumpsters – is a testament to how little he has achieved at City Hall. If as councilor the man and his party couldn't even solve as simple as "problem" of overflowing dumpsters (in fact, Ladner and his party let the city garbage pile up for 4 months during a confrontational city workers strike, making the downtown filthy the entire time), then maybe being Mayor of a city of 600,000 people with a $822 million budget is beyond Mr. Ladner's capabilities.
Both Vision Vancouver candidate Gregor Robertson and NPA candidate Peter Ladner say the police need more money, manpower, and "resources", yet all crime in Vancouver except prohibition-related offenses has gone down for 5 years in a row, and is at a 30-year low. Police are the leading advocates for prohibition, and the police are the primary beneficiaries of prohibition – along with drug lords. The Vancouver Police now have a battle-tank type vehicle for local use, militarizing our police force. I believe that ending prohibition through municipal and provincial assumption of responsibility will stop this relentless escalation of policing costs.
I believe Vancouver citizens' top concern is the cost of living. Property taxes are rising faster than income, particularly those on fixed pensions whose homes are continually reassessed upwards for a larger tax bite. Gasoline costs, rent increases, tax increases, and inflation on all major consumer goods is a greater concern for ordinary people in Vancouver. It's important that City Hall promote policies that continue economic growth while eschewing projects that burden Vancouver citizens with unsustainable tax increases (property, business, Carbon, etc.). The municipal election is also an excellent time to point out that the police and licensing division are behaving in a corrupted and prejudicial manner in regards licensing towards the cannabis culture and myself. I had the police directly interfere in a proposed Commercial Drive location for a Cannabis Culture store even though all products are mainstream and legal, and the city licensing division is refusing a license for the 420 Convenience Store my company opened at 316 West Hastings, across from the BC Marijuana Party headquarters.
My Priorities As Mayor
- Abolish the provincial income tax, slash government spending, then use consumption taxes to finance what remains of government's priorities.
- Legalize marijuana and distribute through provincially licensed outlets. Collect consumption taxes.
- End all the warrant-less inspections by bureaucrats and utilities snoops; instead City Hall will license any indoor growing garden for safety and security of neighbourhoods. The police Growbusters program would be canceled.
- Stop the militarization of Vancouver leading up to the Olympics.
- The current safe injection site INSITE will continue but the project would be advanced to provide the heroin at no charge, and the program extended to clinics across Vancouver (municipal) and British Columbia (provincial).
- A focus on clean water delivery and waste management (including secondary treatments in Vancouver and tertiary treatment in Victoria).
- An end to Taser use by police in British Columbia.
- Ending the RCMP presence in BC with a British Columbia provincial police force.
- Vancouver's existing Medical Marijuana compassion clubs will be licensed by the city.
- I would halt the current administration's plan to transfer a portion of the business tax base burden to the residential tax burden.
- BC Place would be demolished and sold to provide high-density housing. BC Place is in use usually fewer than 5 days a month.
- The Whitecaps Soccer Stadium on the railroad lands by Canada Place would get a green light to proceed. This is an outstanding private money project to put a multi-use sports stadium on the waterfront. Currently this project is not happening because of pressure for these same lands by the Port of Vancouver
- The Vancouver Police Dept. is nearing the end of a 4-year operational review and strategic plan. Each year it seems they've asked for more resources. The 2007 city of Vancouver budget shows at page 23 that the VPD has increased its staffing levels by a whopping 18.6% since 2005. Police receive about 20% of the city property tax revenues (page 34). In 2006 the police budget was $161 million dollars, about 20% of the overall city expenditures (page 48) but the actual cost was $173 million (page 51). 2007 budget for policing was $179 million. Unless the city unilaterally ends the prohibition, these policing costs will continue to escalate, and violence and crime caused by prohibition will continue – no matter how much taxpayer money the police budget gets.
- Start free distribution (injection in person only by nurses) of heroin or Oxycontin to addicts. Currently, the addict buys the heroin, or whatever iffy product the street dealer has sold him, and injects that with a nurse nearby. If the nurse or doctor injected the user with the heroin, the needle, drug, and delivery are done safely. There will be no more street dealers of heroin. Consequently, the lucrative draw of heroin dealing diminishes almost 100%. Street dealing would evaporate, and few or no overdoses would plague our hospitals from heroin. There would be an instant reduction in social disorder and property crime. Clinics would inject the user so the users are spread out over the lower mainland and not congested in one area. The downtown eastside would be greatly improved in appearance and functionality.
- The cost of gasoline, exacerbated by the BC Liberal Carbon Tax and provincial gasoline taxes, rises while this resource is produced within Canada. You and I pay the same price for gasoline as if it were imported from the Middle East or Venezuela. Yet in Venezuela, the cost of gasoline is 16 cents Canadian a liter vs. $1.35 for a liter of the same gasoline in Vancouver. In both cases the gasoline is domestically produced, but the exorbitant cost to the citizen in Vancouver is due to rapacious taxation. Even Canadian gasoline sold in the United States is $1 a liter, and they import it, of course. Government is screwing us.
- End of prescription requirements for drugs for chronic health conditions or maintenance, including female reproductive health concerns, STD medication, and any other condition that is permanent, long-term, or where the patient already fully understands the implications and indications of the medicine they are using. For pain management, a doctor should be involved, but once a person needs to buy medicines for years or life, there should be no prescription requirements. This will make life for the people better while cutting millions of dollars from health care expenditures fees for these unnecessary prescriptions.
Support me in my run for Mayor!
Sincerely,
Marc Scott Emery
Marc@CannabisCulture.com
Office: (604) 689-0590 / Home: (604) 685-8260
www.BCMarijuanaParty.ca
