New Media

Vancouver residents are a compassionate bunch who care mostly about social issues. Well, that’s one take from NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner (as reported in the Hook) following an Ipsos Reid poll that looked like this:

In response to the question, “What is the most important local issue facing the City of Vancouver, that is the one issue you feel should receive the greatest attention for Vancouver’s city council?” Vancouverites replied:

- Social issues 37%
- Transportation 19%
- Crime 15%
- Taxation/government spending 5%
- Environment 4%

Is it really that we’re compassionate, or simply that the other issues seem to be taken care of, or that people generally recognize that the city can’t do much about some of these issues on its own, anyway? For instance, Vancouver is on a number of metrics the most environmentally friendly large city in North America, so action on the environment may not really be required. Taxes have been going up for years, but sale of areas like the False Creek lands have kept rises at a reasonable level. As for crime, the average resident may not even be aware that the city has its own police force separate from the RCMP.

Thus, transporation and social issues become the default election issues, because these are the obvious, in-your-face issues that affect us every day (ie. morning traffic, or the poor homeless guy sleeping next to the entrance to the office building where you work).

Nice to see we actually do care about the real issues. So far, no mention of lipstick or pigs in this fight.

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