The deputy leader of the Green Party of Canada says she will likely decide within a month whether she will seek a seat on Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»city council.
Adriane Carr told the Courier she is interested in becoming one of the city's 10 councillors and will make a decision soon. The local branch of the Greens is expected to hold a nomination meeting in September. "I'm seriously considering a run for a council seat and I am still consulting with supporters and members of the community," said Carr by telephone from Nanaimo, where she was attending a Green Party potluck.
The Greens decided Saturday that it will run one candidate each for council, school board, park board and electoral area A, which includes the university endowment lands. Potential candidates will likely begin filing papers with the party's nomination committee over the next month, said Carr, the former leader of the B.C. Greens.
Carr said she is passionate about several issues in the city that involve protecting the environment, including more discussion regarding the increase in oil tanker traffic around the shores of Vancouver. Though council held a meeting on oil tanker traffic last summer, Carr said the issue was passed to a Metro Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» committee, which has been silent on any recommendations to prevent an environmental disaster, she said. "It's not good enough for me and I don't believe it's good enough for Vancouverites to just shunt that issue off to some other body."
Carr spoke to the Courier on the same day council passed an ambitious environmental plan that sets a road map for the city to follow over the next nine years to make Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»"the greenest city in the world." Carr said she plans to read the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan but couldn't attend the council meetings on the topic last week because of her tour of British Columbia as deputy leader of the Greens.
Carr said she is concerned about council's focus on separated bike lanes, which run from Kitsilano to Chinatown. A business impact study on the lanes is expected to go before council before the end of the month. "The idea of shifting people from cars to bikes is great but only a small portion of people will go that way," she said. "There needs to be a much greater emphasis on other options for car drivers, especially a far better transit system and [council] needs to lobby heavily in terms of getting the money for that."
More focus is also needed on creating more options for pedestrians, including pedestrian malls, and building affordable housing, said Carr, who lives in the West End and has "a cabin in the woods" in Gibsons.
Carr is no stranger to elections, having run in the recent federal election as the Green candidate in Vancouver-Centre, where she collected 9,089 votes for a fourth place finish. Incumbent Liberal Hedy Fry was re-elected.
Carr's federal run was her second in the riding. Carr also ran in the 2005 provincial election as the Green candidate for Powell River-Sunshine Coast and unsuccessfully in a Surrey byelection in 2004.
The civic election is Nov. 19.
Meanwhile, Vision Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Coun. George Chow will seek the provincial NDP nomination in Vancouver-Fraserview. Chow is retiring from civic politics in November.
Twitter: @Howellings
