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An aside on the Vancity board vote

BLOG POST posted on April 16, 2011 by dawn

Blog posts are the work of individual contributors, reflecting their thoughts, opinions and research.
An aside on the Vancity board vote

Earlier this week I did a story about Matt Hern's candidacy for the board of Vancity, which was later taken down by me (at Matt's request). My understanding is that Vancity threatened to remove him as a candidate if the story were to stay up.

I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but it turns out that the Vancity elections are hardly a model of democracy.

Here's why:

Vancity has essentially put a gag-order on candidates for the board. I don't know how old this policy is, but here's the nitty gritty:

- it is not appropriate nor permitted for a candidate to claim that he or she has or will implement specific platforms or policies.
-Candidates must not make promises of what will happen or what actions they will support if they are elected to the board in any materials that they distribute or that tend to support them, directly or indirectly. 
-There will be no negative campaigning; candidates may not make or support negative comments about Vancity, its management, staff, Board, or other candidates.
Now I understand that they don't want a bunch of suckers out there promising to spend members' money on new speed skating rinks or whatever ridiculous thing would win them votes. But muzzling candidates completely seems like a mistake.
 
Maybe it is a big no-no to dare to mention the housing crisis in the city and Vancity's name in the same breath. Perhaps the links between Vancity and the tar sands get folks there feeling uppity. But from my personal perspective, those are really important issues, and I don't see why people running for the board shouldn't comment freely on them.
 
I'm a Vancity member. I've never paid attention to these elections before. But sure, now that you mention it, I wouldn't mind knowing more about the political leanings and vision (in broad terms) of the people running for the board. As it is now, on what can members really base their vote, unless they know someone running?
 
Even more problematic is the system of guided democracy that the Vancity board has introduced. Now I don't know if this is self preservation or what, but as of this election:

The Board has also endorsed five candidates for the three director positions. These five candidates were recommended by the Nominations and Election Committee and are identified by the + symbol on all election material.

This year’s five endorsed candidates are: Anita Braha, Geordie Henderson, Patrice Pratt, David Wong and Kim Richter. The order of names for the endorsed candidates is drawn by lot. The order of appearance for the non-endorsed candidates has also been determined by lot.       

Nice, huh? Not only does Vancity effectively obscure everything but candidates' past work experience and assurances that they're really nice people from Vancity members, they pre-select the winners.

In sum, it appears Vancity has taken as many precautions as possible to avoid coming under community control on a formal/board level. Even though Vancity is technically a co-op, I suppose the term loses meaning fast when we're talking about an organization with assets of over $14 billion.

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Comments

Sun, 04/17/2011 - 11:17 — Tami Starlight

Interesting info.....

No big surprise.

I find it strange how many people invest so much into VanCity. (not just money)

Perhaps it was the original promises that they began with? "Doing so much right with crapitalism".

I actually did not like the fact you posted the piece in question.

Really, it is no shock they are "worth" (have assets) around 14billion.

I actually believe much of their original mission and promise have become tokenism, at best.

Thank you for writing this Dawn!

tami

ps.....nice photo!

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