A COMMON-SENSE CITY BUDGET
How We Can Recoup Some Taxpayers’ Money

By Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr

March 7 is a big budget decision day at Vancouver City Hall.

VANCOUVER CITY COUNCILLOR AND WEST END RESIDENT ADRIANE CARR.

By Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr

March 7 is a big budget decision day at Vancouver City Hall.

Staff have prepared a draft 2023 operating budget -- the biggest one in Vancouver’s history -- recommending almost $2 billion in spending. It is designed to fund all city operations, including the staff needed to implement the capital budget spending on water, sewers, housing, streets, community facilities, and climate-related projects, which voters approved on the October 15 election ballot.

Some of that spending is to make up for previous councils’ gross under-spending on replacing our aging water and sewer pipes.

The ABC councillors on our new Council have the votes to pass or reject whatever they want. I hope they agree with me that many services, like our fire service, are absolutely essential and need more money. As first responders, our firefighters are coping with more fires and medical emergencies than ever.

But do we need to spend an extra $8 million to hire 100 new police officers? I think it makes better sense to invest in new and alternative ways to increase public safety, such as the $2.8 million transfer to Vancouver Coastal Health Authority for mental health nurses and community mental health outreach teams that Council supported this past month.

Other common-sense decisions for me are investments in city services that create a more livable and joyful city, including affordable social housing, park services, community and seniors’ centers, neighbourhood houses, libraries, childcare, and arts and culture, and investing more in keeping our streets clean and moving faster to zero waste.

Another smart budget investment is in our Vancouver Plan, with a focus on developing low-traffic, climate-smart, “complete neighbourhoods”. In the West End we know the joy of living within an easy walk of amenities that fulfil our daily needs. I’d love to see us start planning the same for other parts of our city, including transforming some streets into people-serving places with play areas for kids and dogs, food gardens, and places for seniors to sit in the shade.

Unfortunately, the ABC majority on Council already cut one irreplaceable service that helped people facing unfair eviction by landlords: the Vancouver Renters’ Office, which cost us only about $600,000 per year. I also can’t understand why they recently voted to cut the implementation of a Climate Justice Charter that many Vancouver youth worked on for over a year. It’s a fact: climate change impacts vulnerable and disadvantaged people more. Think of the 99 Vancouver seniors who died in the 2021 “heat dome”.

Worrying about accelerating climate change and the future for our children often keeps me up at night. It’s why I tabled a motion last term directing staff to include up to $1 per resident in the 2023 Budget to support our city’s participation in a municipal class action Sue Big Oil lawsuit (see here). But it’s not in the budget. Was it an oversight? Was there political interference?

I plan to table an amendment to add $6,622 to our operating budget – one cent for each of our 662,248 residents to make us part of an eventual Sue Big Oil class action lawsuit. I don’t want the amount of money to be an excuse for Councillors to vote against the initiative. I want to keep Vancouver committed to inspire other B.C. municipalities to join the legal action, which will likely take a few years to prepare.

A joint action municipal Sue Big Oil lawsuit has an excellent chance of success. In a similar precedent-setting case, Big Tobacco has to pay $246 billion (US) to compensate U.S. states for health care costs caused by smoking their products.

The legal principle is that the corporations that knowingly cause harm to others should pay for the damages they’ve caused. It’s common sense that polluters should pay. Big Tobacco knew their products damaged peoples’ health with huge costs to the health care system. Big Oil knew more than 45 years ago that their products would cause climate change and public harm, but chose to foster doubt in climate science through disinformation campaigns that have greatly delayed the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Today, fossil fuel companies are making record profits. And the costs to cities to repair climate-caused damage are going through the roof. Think of Abbotsford.

Vancouver currently spends about $155 million a year responding to climate change, including reducing our own carbon emissions, adapting our infrastructure and buildings to be more climate-resilient and repairing the damage done by increasingly extreme weather events. I want to recoup the money Vancouver taxpayers spend to avoid, cope with, and repair the damages done to our city by climate change.

My question is: will you support a one penny property tax increase in this budget to give Vancouver a chance to recoup the hundreds of millions of tax dollars we’ve had to spend and will continue to spend as climate extremes get worse to mitigate, adapt to and repair the damage caused by climate change?

I think it’s a fiscally prudent investment. I also think it’s the cheapest “lottery ticket” with the best chance to win big that you’ll ever buy.