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With less than a week remaining until voters across B.C. go to the polls to elect their mayors and councils, eyebrow-raising promises by candidates are making the rounds.
Bringing the NBA back to Vancouver. Creating a “Vancouver loop” SkyTrain going from UBC to Metrotown. Building a 60,000-person “multi-sport” arena.
Experts say grandiose campaign promises tend to muddy the water about what mayors and councils can actually do, and what they need to lobby higher governments for.
“The question that really is on the ballot, but it isn’t articulated in any of these platforms, is leadership,” Andrea Reimer, a former Vancouver city councillor and current professor at the University of British Columbia, said.
“You need to be able to work productively and effectively with governments. Both [at] the provincial, local, and the federal level, regardless of who’s in power.”
CBC News spoke to some who laid out the powers and limitations of B.C.’s cities. Here’s what cities can and can’t do.
Bringing back the NBA? Rivals cutting $300 million from city budgets? Justin McElroy takes a look at honesty in the Vancouver election campaign.
Can cities build housing?
Cities in B.C. are organized under the Municipal Act, according to Dr. Hamish Telford, a professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.
That gives them a broad range of powers when it comes to housing and buildings, such as zoning to determine where industries and single-family homes go and levying property taxes.
But as candidates go to bat on making housing more affordable, there’s one thing a B.C. town can’t do — fund and build their own housing.
“Cities are not in the business of building housing, and they couldn’t afford it,” Telford said.
But “they can zone to entice or require private developers to increase density on certain lots, as well as designing places where affordable community housing could be built.”
This also means life-saving measures like mandating air conditioning in homes, zoning for overdose prevention sites, and local climate mitigation are up to councils.
Who makes local transit decisions?
In Metro Vancouver, the long-term priorities of regional transit are decided by TransLink’s Mayors’ Council — a committee of all 21 mayors in the region.
If those priorities include big infrastructure proposals — say, extending the SkyTrain to Newton or the North Shore — the Mayors’ Council lobbies the province and the feds for the money to do it.
Reimer says that makes lavish transit promises particularly eye-rolling, as they need to have the support of other mayors first.
“These new extensions, it’s not to say they’re not needed or it’s not a good debate,” she said.
“But some more disclosure around the full extent of the challenge, I think, would not just benefit voters but benefit [candidates] because ultimately they are going to have to go and bring those questions to the electorate.”
Police forces and fire departments
In B.C., funding — or defunding — the police and fire departments is mostly a municipal affair.
And while promises like hiring 100 cops and 100 nurses (the latter is largely in provincial jurisdiction) catch the eye, police forces aren’t treated the same across the province.
In cities with municipal police forces, there are unelected police boards that govern spending priorities, and the province is also responsible for ultimate oversight under the Public Safety Ministry.
That means policing priorities are often split across three bodies: funding largely comes from cities, priorities from police boards, and oversight from the province.
“The public cannot meaningfully engage with any one of those in a way to get what they want out of it,” Reimer said. “I think those are the kinds of things that need to be modernized … it doesn’t make any sense now.”
The powers of a mayor as responsibilities evolve
Almost all of B.C.’s municipalities are given their powers under the Community Charter — except for Vancouver, which has its own charter.
The legislation means that the city and province often have an extended back-and-forth when it comes to passing policy — one famous example was when Vancouver tried to get booze in parks.
“Unlike Europe or parts of the U.S., cities in Canada don’t have their own legal authority,” Reimer says.
“They only have what the province decides to give them. And very importantly, the province at any time has the power to take away those authorities and even to take away the city.”
The charters means that mayors in B.C., unlike in Ontario, are not “strong mayors” — they’re essentially another councillor who is the face of the city at large.
Reimer and Telford both said the relationship between the province and cities is evolving, with the province overturning Vancouver’s decision to freeze police funding and recently mulling over forcing cities to zone for affordable housing.
“Provinces are frustrated by bottlenecks at the municipal level,” Telford said.
“They’re intervening — as is their right. Because the municipalities are, as political scientists say, creatures of the provinces.”