Sean Bickerton

Kicking over the traces with good friends Didi & Lil!

“Out with the Old and In with the New!” has never rung more true for me than it does with the advent of 2012!

It’s only been five years since I moved back to Vancouver after twenty years away in New York. It’s taken that long just to find good Mexican!

So it was a complete  accident when I got caught up in local politics during efforts to improve my building.

When Peter Ladner came over to ask me to run, I spent the first half hour pointing out to him how unsuited I was then to be a candidate, having just moved home, with so few connections, etc.

But I’m incapable of doing anything half-heartedly, especially when it comes to underdogs, and what should have been a brief political detour ended up consuming the next three years of my life.

Some have taken exception to my post-campaign public renunciation of local politics and the demands of public life, thinking it originates from pique or is just a bruised ego talking.

Bruised ego aside, something I readily own up to, this last campaign left me in debt and it’s out of necessity that I must turn my attention to the responsibility I owe first to my family, as well as to the cadre of internationally-celebrated, grammy-award-winning clients we serve through our business, ArtistManager.Net: Talented Websites For The Most Talented People In The World!

I have spent my entire life involved in the performing arts and entertainment and had the privilege of working at the top of that profession internationally, first as a VP with Columbia Artists Management and with my own agency IAG, and now producing state-of-the-art websites that renowned artists use to communicate with the world.

I love Vancouver and the hundreds of remarkable people we’ve had the pleasure of meeting through politics since moving back, and I’ve grown immensely through the experience.

But I believe after three years of intense service that I’ve more than discharged any obligation I ever had to the NPA – twice over in my own estimation.

Now I must – and am eager to – focus my energy and attention on the re-imagined, reinvented, next-generation incarnation of our business that we will be launching next month.

The importance of community remains one of my fundamental values though, as does the prime importance in life of the arts. So I continue as Strata Chair of my building – Paris Place – continuing efforts to improve quality of life for our residents and for my neighborhood, in cooperation with the Crosstown Residents Association and False Creek Residents Association.

I also remain Chair of a Strategic Task Force for the Langley Community Music School co-founded by my sister Linda, third-largest music school in BC and one of the largest in western Canada.

And I will continue to write and speak out on issues I believe are important to a Canadian way of life I see as increasingly threatened.

Tom and I end 2011 a little leaner but much greener and even keener than ever before to meet the challenges of trying to invent a small but excellent slice of the future, an adventure we’ve been involved in conducting together since we first met in 1986, my first year in New York.

To everyone chasing their dreams, I salute you and share your passion for what comes next!

Here’s to a fabulous 2012!

It can be a bit humbling, learning just where one fits on a scale of the city’s affections, in my case somewhere just below the barn-burning Tim Louis (Love you Tim!), just higher than a newbie with a bit of baggage. Even tougher to contemplate the lack of enthusiasm from a party I’ve worked hard to help rebuild over the past three years.

C’est la vie.

But I wasn’t the only casualty. How is it possible we’ve spent more than $2.5 million to go from the lowest-ever representation on council to our second-lowest representation ever?

There were only seven incumbents running for ten spots and one didn’t make it, leaving four spots open. Given that the NPA was the only viable alternative, we should have taken at least three council seats, if not four.

Especially after one of the worst riots in the city’s history, a quarter billion dollars in losses at the Olympic Village, and neighborhoods across the city up in arms. Everyone agreed council needed re-balancing.

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Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Dr. Ballem, City Staff and Concerned Residents of Vancouver:

My name is Sean Bickerton and I’m speaking today as President of Paris Place Strata, as a Director of the False Creek Residents Association and as one of the founding members of the Vancouver Not Vegas! coalition.

I would like to state on behalf of the members of the coalition that we fully respect the workers here tonight, their jobs and the heart-rending stories they have shared with us.

But i’m also wondering, as you must be, how a one-word footnote in an appendix of a 50-page report somehow morphed into the largest casino in Western Canada …

I’m also wondering how, like some creature from the movie Aliens, it managed to glom 0nto BC Place, our family-oriented sports stadium? We’ve recently learned that families and children will be banned from one of the main entrances to BC Place – an entrance paid for by the taxpayers of BC – because that once-public stadium entrance will be taken over by Paragon’s private new megacasino!

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On Monday I addressed Vancouver City Council during the third night of public hearings held to consider Paragon Gambling Corp’s massive megacasino proposed for downtown Vancouver. My presentation challenged some of the core economic assumptions the proponents have used in trying to sell their project to the city.

Councillor Deal asked for additional information in relation to my observation that approximately half of the casinos in the United States are in bankruptcy or receivership.

In response to the good councillor’s request, I spent a few hours perusing respected news journals, financial reports and court bankruptcy documents.  It is only partial and not meant to be comprehensive – I don’t have a city staff of 1000 to do my research - but it’s certainly representative. My brief research was limited to the past twelve months. There wasn’t time to include casino bankruptcies in 2009, a year that saw many others.

The result is a compilation of 50 major destination casinos across America that are in bankruptcy or receivership awash in billions of dollars of debt.

Unemployment in Las Vegas reached 15% last October and remains well above 13% today. And future prospects for the industry are worse, according to the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who reported on February 8 that “he expects more casino bankruptcies in the stagnant economy.”

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Paragon's River Cree Casino in downtown Edmonton, Alberta

Our paragon of a Premier and Paragon Gaming, a premier casino peddler, have decided to give Vancouver a great big gift!

If approved by City Council after public hearings this Thursday night, they will insert that huge gift-wrapped package right up Vancouver’s False Creek, depositing it right into the centre of our city.

It’s huge! It will be the largest casino in Western Canada, featuring more than 1,500 slot machines!

It will create jobs, we’re told! And provide buckets full of cash to local and provincial coffers!

Did I mention the jobs? Big jobs! Hundreds of them! Right here in the centre of our city! And in case I didn’t mention it, buckets full of cash for local and provincial coffers. What’s not to love?

Now, they say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. So let’s just ignore the fact that the American company building this mega-casino in our city’s heart is not required to provide any local community amenities in violation of Vancouver development policy.

And we’ll ignore for now concerns about 25,000 of our fellow residents with compulsive gambling addictions. Next to a huge shiny new casino, those old bromides about being our brother’s keeper seem so old-fashioned, don’t they?

Did I mention the jobs?

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North East False Creek Development Sites

Last night, the City of Vancouver held public hearings on a proposal by Concord Pacific to develop Lot 5B West (see map to left).

The False Creek Residents Association brought out three dozen speakers from every neighbourhood in False Creek to speak to the amenity package proposed for that development. There were so many speakers that Council had to extend the hearing until 11pm, but still had to refer more than eighteen speakers to Monday night.

It was the position of the FCRA to reject the amenity package proposed for the development outright in favor of an amendment we submitted last night (see Amendment 4.6 below.)

9.06 acre Creekside Park promised to Vancouver in 1990

The amendment calls for immediate transfer of Creekside Park’s future home on Lot 9 from Concord to the province for $1, as will have to happen eventually; immediate greening of that site with a foot of soil covered with lawn; and relocation of all of Concord’s commercial activities (such as Cirque du Soleil, etc.) to their own commercially zoned 6c South.

My remarks to council follow, as does our suggested amendment. Please click here to view video of the hearing – my brief remarks begin at 3:08, and then questions from councillors continue until 3:32 pm.

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Last night, February 1, Councillor Woodsworth’s motion passed with overwhelming support. There were a number of amendments and revisions and I’ll publish the final result as soon as it’s available.

But the result is unmistakable – a call for a review of gambling in the province and a refusal to rubber-stamp casino expansion until the contractual rights and interests of charities and non-profits to a share of gaming funds are protected.

When three of us first met last November to begin building opposition to this casino, we were told there was no point because the casino was a done deal, that whatever the Premier wanted, he got.

Last night, thanks to Councillor Woodsworth’s initiative, we played a small part in helping demonstrate Margaret Meade’s dictum in its purest form: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

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Vancouver City Council is considering a staff report today allowing the Vancouver Art Gallery to move to 2/3 of Larwill Park. This could be a wonderful development if they incorporate a concert hall on the other 1/3 of the land. As this has come up again, I’m reprising my original article about Larwill Park.

I’m also pleased to note that Michael Geller has recently come out in favour of my proposal to close Cambie Street between Dunsmuir and Georgia Streets, in order to provide restaurants and bars that can animate this area at night.

In its heyday, Larwill Park was a centre of life in the city, home to games of baseball, lacrosse, football and cricket; the site of political demonstrations, rallies, fairs and concerts; and a marshalling field and drill ground for troops. Parades, carnivals, Ferris wheels, sports and politics animated a site once dedicated to fun in a city not well known for it.

By contrast today it sits dark, covered in asphalt, used as a parking lot, and the blocks along Dunsmuir and Georgia Street east of Homer are dead at night, bereft of the street-level commercial activity that’s the life-blood of any urban setting.

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This week the professional staff of our City, the experts we’ve hired to advise us, produced a thorough, thought-through plan after three years of consultations and revisions under the rubric of Historic Area Height Review.

Nonetheless, some of our city’s most educated and influential citizens felt it necessary to oppose this plan for new housing in the DTES, successfully defeating any further consideration of this report’s recommendations for the DTES during the rest of this council’s term.

I strongly disagree with their position on a strict policy basis favoring something over nothing and want to know why they’ve intervened to shut down any progress in this way.

That is why I’ve publicly challenged Michael Harcourt, the SFU Professors, and the Building Communities Society to sponsor a public forum where we can debate these issues.

Mr. Harcourt, Professors of SFU, and the Building Communities Society – are you up for a fair debate? I am. Name the time and place.

In December I wrote Guns, Gangs & Steel in response to the recent gangland-style shootout one block from our Mayor’s home. The purpose of that article was to draw attention to the danger of illegal weapons flooding into our province from unregulated American gun shows. Although all the facts relied on in that article were cross-linked to verifiable external sources, one commenter suggested I was wrong on the facts regarding American guns fueling violence in Mexico.

The U.S. government agreed with my assessment:

In December, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced it was seeking emergency authority to require 8,000 gun dealers near the border to report multiple purchases by any individual of high-firepower semiautomatic rifles that use a detachable magazine.

The death toll in Mexico’s drug wars is staggering — more than 30,000 people killed as of last year. The role of American-purchased guns in that carnage is also undeniable. In the past four years, more than 60,000 guns connected to crimes in Mexico have been tracked back to American gun dealers. About three-quarters of those weapons originated from gun shops in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California, the four states covered by the A.T.F. plan.

New York Times, January 16, 2011

The guns flooding into Canada across the northern border are no less dangerous. There was another shootout on our city streets this morning, in the parking lot of a 7/11 at Knight and 33rd.