Vancouver politics: Natural gas vote brings ABC majority’s first loss

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A much-watched Vancouver council vote on natural gas this week was the first time a major policy decision did not go the way of the ABC party majority.

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On Wednesday night, council split 5-5 on bylaw amendments that would have allowed the use of natural gas for heating and hot water in new buildings. A tie means the amendments are not approved.

It meant the city will not reverse course after all on a policy adopted in 2020 by the previous council. That policy aims to gradually reduce the burning of natural gas, which city staff estimate makes up 57 per cent of carbon emissions in Vancouver.

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In July, the ABC-majority council — by a 6-5 margin — ordered city staff to prepare amendments to the building bylaw to reintroduce the option of using natural gas in new buildings.

The key vote Wednesday came from ABC Coun. Rebecca Bligh, who supported the decision in July but this week opposed the bylaw change, voting against most of her party colleagues, including the mayor.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Bligh said she believed council’s July decision was based, in part, on “information that was incomplete and some information that was wrong.”

“I believe we made the wrong decision,” she said.

Bligh referred to arguments by some fellow ABC council members who said allowing gas heating would improve affordability and help get more homes built.

Bligh said that since July, she had become convinced these arguments were not valid, and she had heard from many homebuilders “who say electricity is cheaper and better.”

“I’m glad we took the time to follow proper process to gather all the facts and hear from people in our communities,” Bligh said Wednesday. “Now that we have, the path forward could not be more clear.”

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Last month, Bligh told Postmedia News she had continued learning more about the issue since the July meeting, and it was “not a forgone conclusion” she would support the change when it came back to council for a final vote.

The staff report proposed allowing natural gas heating in new construction only for buildings built to higher levels of energy efficiency, but the five councillors who voted against the change said they worried about increased emissions and were not convinced it would meaningfully improve housing affordability or production.

Staff’s analysis said there would be “minimal difference” between operating costs for electric and costs for gas heating under the proposed changes, and no correlation between construction cost and carbon emission performance.

Other than Bligh’s change, the rest of council voted along the same lines as July. ABC Coun. Brian Montague, who introduced the July amendment, supported bringing back gas, as did ABC Mayor Ken Sim and ABC councillors Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lenny Zhou, and Mike Klassen. Green councillors Adriane Carr and Pete Fry and ABC’s Lisa Dominato and Peter Meiszner opposed the reversal again this week, as they did in July.

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After Wednesday’s meeting, Green Coun. Adriane Carr said Bligh deserves credit for her vote, calling her “a brave woman.”

“To me, it’s symbolic of exactly what a good functioning democracy should be about: you’re open to information, you hear new information, you can change your position based on that information,” Carr said.

“It’s actually a big triumph. I’ve been really worried about the rollback on our climate action.”

Dominato said she had been asked by many where the idea to go back to allowing natural gas came from.

“In this term, no one has been banging down my door for us to reverse course. Only the natural gas sector and their representatives have been advancing this agenda.

“The city isn’t a business. It’s a level of government, just like the provincial or federal governments,” Dominato said. “We need to consider multiple bottom lines, not just financial lines or the influence of big lobby groups.”

The issue of lobbying was raised last month, after Postmedia News revealed the mayor’s senior adviser, David Grewal, participated in discussions on the city’s natural gas policy, including meeting with a lobbyist for Fortis, B.C.’s largest natural gas supplier, while concurrently serving as director of Vancouver-based natural gas companies. The Fortis lobbyist also met with other ABC councillors before July’s surprise direction.

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The mayor’s office has said it’s confident Grewal’s roles with his businesses do not interfere with his duty at the city, but the news prompted questions from the public and other politicians.

When some members of the public who addressed council this week on natural gas raised the subject of lobbying and Grewal’s business interests, they were cut off by the chair and encouraged to stay on topic.

Unlike other councillors, Montague did not speak before the final vote Wednesday to explain his position.

On Thursday, Montague said he was not disappointed by the result.

“I’m not upset, I just think that’s the way politics works,” Montague said. “I’m in the wrong line of work if I have such thin skin that I have to worry about winning all the time.”

One of ABC’s strengths as a party is its diversity of viewpoints and backgrounds, Montague said. “If you look at us, we’re about as different as you can get.”

Bligh echoed that sentiment in her comments Thursday, saying ABC’s caucus members “share different interests and experiences, and that helps shape how we show up as a big-tent party.”

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That “big-tent” approach for the 2022 campaign clearly resonated with voters, who handed ABC a landslide victory and strong mandate to pursue its 94-point platform.

But bringing natural gas back into buildings was not on ABC’s platform in 2022. It’s within council’s authority to change building bylaws concerning gas, but they can’t say they have a clear mandate from voters to do it.

And this week’s rare loss for the ABC majority shows there are limits to what Sim and his allies can push through when pursuing directions the party never agreed to for last election’s “big-tent” platform.

dfumano@postmedia.com

twitter.com/fumano

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