What Vancouver city council’s funding cut says about its commitment to reconciliation

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There are times in life when you hate being right, and this is one of them for me. Being wrong sucks too, but when you’re right about something you had a foreboding feeling about, it bites.

In a newsletter I penned after last October’s civic election in Vancouver, I pondered where reconciliation would stand with the new incoming council. Would it still be a priority, or would it be dismissed as a Vision Vancouver thing, swept out by association with the previous regime?

I asked this because Vancouver declared itself a City of Reconciliation in 2014 and in many ways has since emerged as a leader in urban reconciliation across Canada. Despite this, reconciliation was barely mentioned in the last election, and isn’t explicitly listed among the city’s 2019 budget priorities.

Well, I recently got my answer while researching a story about Vancouver city council’s decision to cut its Innovation Fund in half. A dig beneath the numbers reveals a deeper story about how precarious reconciliation funding can be in the hands of newly elected decision-makers.

The Innovation Fund gave the city some flexibility to support emerging ideas and community projects as they came up between city budgets, as long as they found some matching funds. With no dedicated reconciliation fund to otherwise draw from, a slew of innovative reconciliation projects have been supported by this fund in the last few years, from healing and wellness centres, to cultural initiatives, and more.

So why did NPA Councillor Melissa De Genova want to cut this fund? Ostensibly to reduce property taxes. She told a December council meeting that she wasn’t exactly sure what it funded, but that savings had to be found for fiscal responsibility.

But when I interviewed her in January, she made it clear she’d picked the Innovation Fund on purpose. She referred to it as a “Vision Vancouver slush fund” that was devoid of transparency and accountability, and had to be cut.

“There’s nothing in the Innovation Fund that specifically says that it supports reconciliation projects,” she told me, adding that staff had assured her such projects could get funding from other sources, like the city’s contingency fund. (Though she declined to say which staff had offered that suggestion, just moments after she expressed concern about Vision’s alleged lack of transparency.)

Green Councillor Adriane Carr was one of the few councillors to question De Genova during that December meeting, though even she was “reluctantly” prepared to vote for her proposal.

Carr later told me that council — and especially its newly elected members — should have sought more information before voting to cut the fund. No one told them the fund helped support the city’s reconciliation initiatives, she said.

But the new city council remains committed to reconciliation, both councillors assured me.

So, a bunch of newly elected city councillors (and a few who should know better) halve an important reconciliation fund, admittedly not knowing exactly what it does. But councillors say that reconciliation is still a priority with them.

I’d hate to see if it wasn’t.

People are talking about

• Vancouver’s Best Places breaks down the annual Nisga’a Hobiyee celebration that will be held this weekend in Vancouver.

• StarMetro is reporting that the Vancouver School Board won’t open its own independent inquiry into former trustee Ken Clement, who was charged with communicating to obtain sexual services from a minor in an underage sex sting last June. Clement, who was the first known Indigenous school trustee in Vancouver, has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial in October.

• In this CBC News opinion piece, Indigenous affairs columnist Doug Cuthand gives his take on the recent incident in Washington between a white youth wearing a Make America Great Again hat and an Indigenous elder.

• This Surrey Now-Leader editorial looks at the intangible yet groundbreaking benefits of a joint meeting between the Semiahmoo First Nation’s council and White Rock’s city council.

Shout-outs