Pamela Swanigan
for City Council 2022
Vision - Integrity - Common sense
Creating a liveable, sustainable Delta for all.
CONNECT WITH ME!
VOLUNTEER
If you share my vision, values, and priorities, I would love your help with the campaign. (If you don't, I'd love a chat, to learn about your side of things.)
Send me an email at ElectPam2022@gmail.com
DONATE
If you'd like to help me pay for brochures, lawn signs, and ads, please send an e-transfer to:
LAWN SIGN REQUEST
Lawn signs will be coming soon! Watch this space for updates.
Nature and community come first.
Together, with hard work and a sense of higher purpose, we transition Delta to a world-leading eco-suburban and sustainable-agriculture region that serves as a model of achievability across the globe.
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Local businesses thrive with ecotourism, green "gather and linger" spaces for locals, and participation in e-commerce initiatives along the lines of the UK's NearSt platform.
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We draw a hard line on developer profiteering, rejecting all irresponsible development and prioritizing affordable (actually affordable, not "affordable"), net-zero rental and co-op buildings, with solar power, living roofs, native-plant landscaping, rain-capture capacity, and permeable paving.
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We lobby the provincial government to enact vacancy-control laws, so that landlords can't do an end-run around rent-control laws by jacking up rents 40% or more between tenants, as Delta's largest rental-property company did in 2020.
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Farms gain ecological and economic resilience through agritourism, crop diversification, biodiversity restoration, and levelled-up participation in the Delta Farmland and Wildlife Trust set-aside program.
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We transition to green infrastructure systems in order to increase human population capacity while relieving strain on our aging grey infrastructure system and reverse pollution and run-off levels.
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We renovate our major parking lots from heat-trapping asphalt eyesores to green lots with central treed squares for relaxing and socializing and bumper blocks painted with bright pictures by our local elementary-school children.
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We protect trees through stringent, meaningful bylaws and the end of cash-in-lieu.
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We transform our many "lawn deserts" into life-supporting parks and public gardens, with native flowers, bee-friendly turf, bioswales, and sources of water for humans and wildlife.
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We restore and zealously protect Delta's ecological systems. We reject destructive projects such as Roberts Bank Terminal 2 and the Tilbury LNG expansion.
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Council and residents collaborate closely with First Nations knowledge-keepers to learn traditional sustainability practices and values.
MY VISION
We draw on best practices from around the world.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, we look to successful ecological, economic, and social models to create a vibrant set of communities. Examples are
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Ontario's circular economy mandate
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Chicago's green parking lots
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Sweden's sustainable eco-city, Holma
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Quebec's support program for new mothers
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Cuba's "each one teach one" knowledge swap
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Kingston, Ontario's, public wall for tag-graffiti artists
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Scarborough's "meadoway" green corridor
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Point Grey's "butterflyway" neighbourhood
People are engaged, connected, and excited to live here.
YOU are involved in bringing your visions for community and the environment to life. YOU get to help solve the everyday challenges and realize the potential of this incredible place.
In my vision, Delta has a thriving, vibrant culture of with resident-driven groups and events such as
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The Zero-Waste Delta electric-van fleet--to help the reuse of couches and mattresses
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The North Delta-South Delta Ride-Share Program--to keep our retail workers and others from having to spend hours of their day on the bus!--
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The South Delta Sloughkeepers (complementing North Delta's Cougar Creek Streamkeepers)
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The Teen Graffiti Artists' Group
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Friends of Lions Park (or Pattison Park, or Mackie Park, or North Delta Watershed Park, or...)
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The Wisdom of Our Elders Storytelling Sessions
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North Delta-South Delta Cultural Exchange nights
Honour.
The type of honour I'm talking about means doing good things even though we don't have to and not doing bad things even though we can. In other words, it means not taking advantage.
Honour in this sense is the one of the only ways we have of using power wisely and fairly.
I think, for instance, about how things would look right now if oil executives decided to be honourable and sell oil at cost while the Ukraine war is going on, instead of continuing to make $56,875 a day. (Yup, this is what top oil CEOs are making.) What a different and better world.
Integrity.
When a pillar has integrity, that means it is sound and internally consistent. To me, practising integrity means making sure that my statements line up with my beliefs and my actions line up with my statements.
MY VALUES
Compassion.
I get it. I get why people are scared. I get why people are mad.
I also get why people are simmering with a desire to take part in change, to be called into service in the interests of higher causes. I get why people love this place we live in and this planet that we live on. I get why someone can love birds and also cats, why they can vote NDP provincially and Conservative federally.
Most of all, I get it that people need to know that their story is being heard and validated and found to matter. ALL of our stories are important, whether we are third-generation Pakistani-Canadian storekeepers or 10th-generation English-descended farmers or First Nations people who have been here since time immemorable.
When we know that our own stories have been heard and taken in, we listen to other people's stories with less resentment and greater charity. I believe that a great telling of stories, a great building of understanding and compassion, needs to happen in order for us to create a strong, nurturing, adaptable society.
Common sense.
I've seen a lot of kooky stuff in my 58 years. As I say above, I get where it comes from. That doesn't mean I think it's a good idea to act on distorted thinking, magical thinking, malicious thinking, self-interested thinking, non-thinking, or the kind of outright goofiness that we hear from many academic, political, and media circles.
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It makes sense to me that if the people of a community raise funds for a hospice, that hospice should belong to them, and people who don't even live in the area (or, for that matter, the country) should not be able to vote to take it away from them.
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It makes sense to me that if you've got a heritage village on one side of a waterway and a bunch of generic, non-heritage malls on the other side, you do your "building up" and densification on the side of the heritage village. No, wait, what? The other way around. THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
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It makes sense that if a bunch of our retail workers are spending two hours on a bus in either direction before and after their long, tiring shifts, we'd bloody well better find a way to get THAT fixed. Like, yesterday.
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It makes sense not to develop directly on the edge of a major river. It is common sense not to block young salmon from the eelgrass they need to survive by putting in massive terminals without even any passthroughs for marine life.
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It makes sense to think that if people have attractive green places to gather and socialize and linger, the stores around those places will see an increase in custom.
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It makes sense that if we give teens no options for spending their free time in enjoyable ways, they're gonna make their own entertainment, and we might not always like it.
Let's just not do silly stuff. Let's do stuff that makes sense.
MY STORY
I was born in East Oakland, California, and came to Canada when I was 5, living in various parts of BC with my back-to-the-land parents until we finally settled on 5 acres in the West Kootenays.
My mother was a writer and social advocate. My stepdad was a selective logger and community organizer, and then an MLA and cabinet minister in the BC legislature. I watched him work unbelievably hard every day for decades and never do a single thing to line his own pockets or serve his own personal interests. I guess this is why I have a different idea of what a politician is than some other people do. I guess it's also why I get perplexed and distressed when I see some of our Delta politicians seeming to act in self-serving ways or kowtow to the development oligarchy we've got going out here.
When I was 19, I had the honour of becoming a Canadian citizen. I've kept my American citizenship, in order to keep stay connected with the African American side of my heritage--but there is no doubt in my mind which is the better country. I’ve lived in the Northwest Territories, Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Etobicoke, Kitchener-Waterloo, but I’ve always come back to the West Coast.
I’ve been a professional writer since I was 19, when I got my first piece in the Vancouver Sun. I’ve also taught English at Kwantlen and other universities. In lean times, I’ve worked at stores like Save-On and Purdys. But mostly I’ve written. Right now my main job is writing articles for a website offering advice to caregivers whose parent or spouse wants to age at home.
I don’t own much of anything, and nobody owns me. Some people have told me I can’t win a seat on council if I don’t have the developers and realtors in my pocket. I don’t believe that. If the people of Delta don’t vote for me, it will be for their own good reasons, not because I haven’t pandered to the powerful.
I’m running because I see the current council acting as if Delta were just another place. Delta isn’t just another place. Delta is one of the most ecologically important places in the world. Every single person who lives here has the awe-inspiring privilege of stewarding it.
Developers and this council tell us that if we want viable businesses and roofs over our heads, we have to pave Delta over. This is not so. If we take profiteering out of the picture, many things are possible. Affordable rental and co-op units with solar energy and living roofs. Villages with green parking lots and green infrastructure. A thriving ecotourism economy, and farms flourishing through agritourism and crop diversification. There are hundreds of exciting, workable, win-win solutions.
I’m running because I want us Deltans to be the good guys. I know we can be. Let’s make it so.