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Great expectations risk great disappointments

by Karin Litzcke
The Republic

The potential for Vancouver's new COPE council majority to stumble in office was articulated best by Frances Bula in her November 22, Vancouver Sun article: "Jim Green, who, like the entire COPE council-elect, is taken aback by the high expectations people have that the new councillors can instantly solve problems."

If there is a phrase that captures the challenge facing COPE, "high expectations" has got to be it. The problem is not a lack of talent in the COPE ranks. The problem is a lack of superhuman talent.

Over its decades in opposition, and throughout this civic election campaign, the message sent by COPE was a resounding and certain "we can do it better." What COPE candidates like Jim Green have been saying, when they heckled, criticized, abused, and ridiculed the tools and strategies of other guys, was that they have other tools in their belt, insights the others lack, connections they don't have, and that they can achieve levels of performance that eluded the NPA.

COPE encouraged its supporters to expect the moon, however defined: buses when and where riders want them, cars screeching to a halt when cyclists push a button along the bike routes, libraries open all the time, parks where dogs frolic without restriction, a ward system without fail, and schools without union and management in conflict, not to mention solutions to the Downtown Eastside.

When incumbent COPE councillors ran on their record of voting against the initiatives of the NPA, there was a clear promise to either not do those things, or to undo them, once in office. When they cast those negative votes in the last sitting of council, did it occur to the COPE minority councillors that voting against the plans of the majority is a lot easier than to be the majority and come up with new plans?

When COPE parks candidate Anita Romaniuk stated in her nomination speech that neighborhoods should have their say over how their parks evolve, as long as no unionized jobs were lost, did she realize she was making implicit and potentially conflicting promises to two very demanding groups?

What did Heather Deal, newly-elected COPE parks board commissioner, think she was saying to dog-owners when she said that COPE would have more parks events that include dogs? How exactly does she think COPE can deliver more park access for dogs and meet the expectations of other factions among park-users too?

When the COPE school trustees said disapprovingly to the NPA majority that parents were angry with "this NPA-dominated board" for cutting programs, did they realize that they were making an implicit promise not to make parents angry?

When COPE incumbents and candidates attended protests and waved at the camera, or supported the Woodward's squatters, what did they think they were saying? Was it not, "You won't have to protest, or squat, on my watch"?

A lot of parks, school, and city stakeholders look like they've been set up to be disappointed.

When left-wing oppositions get into office, they always find that a dollar doesn't stretch any further, that there is no category of taxpayer that is eager to ante up more, that bureaucrats are sometimes right, that public sector unions are no more tractable about wages, and that the interests of different parties aren't as easy to line up as new COPE parks commissioner Lindsay Poaps' campaign comment would suggest: labour and environmentalists "just need to get over [them]selves."

When those realities cause left-wing governments to make some decisions and policies that are similar to those made by their predecessors, they are accused by their supporters of "selling out." It happened most recently when Naomi Klein, in town for a COPE fundraiser, had the crowd roaring its approval for new COPE school board trustee Kevin Millsip's rejection of any business-type activity to help fund the public school system.

He and the whole incoming COPE school board crew expressed certainty throughout the campaign that they could wrangle more money out of the provincial government to cover the cost of teacher wage-increases, and they were merciless in their abuse of the NPA candidates for actually trying to budget around the funding shortfall and for looking for (and even finding) alternate, business-type, sources of income.

The problem with high expectations is that a decent, normal, even commendable level of success in office looks like failure when held up against them.

The jubilation on the faces of elected COPE councillors, commissioners, and trustees, as they watched the election results come in, suggests that they themselves expect to be able to do great things in office.

Whether anyone is successful depends entirely on the length of the measuring stick used to judge them. COPE has given itself a pretty long one.

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