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
