So how do you, how do you plan to find that balance and, and bring young people and, and families back to Vancouver?

Well, again, um, I'm doing this as a mother of two and grandmother of two.

My daughter and her family are living in our basement suite.

So believe me, I relate to it personally, and, uh, if I saw, um, any of my competitors that I thought had the ability to affect the turnaround that I'm describing, I would support them, but I don't.

Ultimately, knowing what I do about the, the history, uh, going back to 2008, the city changed its model, uh, business model to regularize developer contribution, CAC, as a re- as a revenue stream.

And when that happened, everything c- became about making their targets, and what they didn't seem to take into consideration was the inflationary nature of up zoning.

So we effectively created a business model selling up zoning for revenue that inflated land values exponentially.

How do you think Ken Sim and, and ABC have handled public safety and crime issues?

What would you do differently when it comes to public safety, uh, approach-wise from maybe what Ken Sim is currently doing?

Well, I think the most important thing, again, coming back to the sen- the theme of balance, we have lost our balance as a city with respect to how we've been ha- ha- handling public safety.

Going back even further than you mentioned to, uh, the time of, of, of, um, Philip Owen as mayor, when he introduced the four pillars approach, the idea was that we needed to have these four pillars in balance.

Um, and that included of, of course, prevention.

We need to be teaching our, our kids that it's a bad thing to, um, to get into being drug addicted.

[laughs] It's kind of self-evident.

Um, it also involved recovery, which is something that we are very focused on.

Why should somebody who has never voted for your party give you their vote this time, and what is the single biggest promise that you would ask them to hold you to?

Uh, Colleen, first of all, tell the audience who you are and why the public should trust you with their vote on October 17th.

My name is Colleen Hardwick.

I'm running for mayor of Vancouver with Team for Livable Vancouver.

Uh, I was born, raised, and educated here in Vancouver.

And I am now the mother of two and grandmother of two, so I have skin in the game for the future of Vancouver Um, my background academically, I followed in my father's footsteps, Dr. Walter Hardwick, in geography, political science, and urban planning, and I worked on many of the research projects, including that led to the creation of the Livable Region Plan.

So my knowledge base is deep in the city.

I was 10 when my dad was elected to city council, and I grew up reading city council reports.

But what is Vancouver's biggest internal issue, and what is Vancouver's biggest external issue? How would you solve them?

Mm.

But my view, by telling you all of this, is a long-term view.

I was born and raised and educated here, and I, I knew my way around City Hall long before I ran and was elected in 2018.

Up until 2008, I sat on the Development Permit Board, for example, and in 2012, I sat on the Mayor's Task Force on Housing Affordability.

So I've watched all of the regime changes that have happened over the years, and most people don't understand the big picture of how all of this has come about.

But going back to the '70s, in '76 when we had Habitat Forum here in Vancouver, Vancouver literally was put on the map as the poster child for the livable city.

And a livable city was, it was defined as a city that was in balance between housing and infrastructure.

Hmm

So w- what do you think of this plebiscite idea?

I think it's the definition of a charade.

It's a false show or pretense meant to trick people into, or to look nice, nice when the truth is different.

Um, it is an election ploy, and it's a very cynical action to spend half a, half a million dollars on a plebiscite that is really meaningless outside of really a show to a certain cohort of voters.

Um, and I, I find, I find it really crazy after four years that these guys have been in, uh, on council, and now they've had four years to deal with it and they've failed to deliver solutions.

But this is just a cynical attempt to distract from their four years of ineffective government leading up to the next civic election in October.

Okay, so what, what would you like people to remember during this election campaign? W- I know it's summer right now, right? So people are probably on vacation, but you're very quickly going to get into an intense period of campaigning here, but what do you want people to keep in mind?

Well, watch out for the slogans.

Colleen.

Well, public safety has been deteriorating in Vancouver for decades, and successive mayors across the political spectrum have offered slogans, not solutions, and failed to deliver results.

Case in point, Ken Simms' 100 Police and 100 Nurses slogan, Care of Kareem Allam.

Also, the inappropriate endorsement by the VPD and interference with the police board.

In February of this year, London Drugs, located in the old Woodwards building in the downtown east side, permanently closed after 17 years and cited safety concerns as the reason.

Our city is failing and our residents and businesses know it.

So let's talk about the team plan, if I can do that.

Colleen.