SCMP: Hong Kong emigrant Meena Wong launches bid to become Vancouver’s first Chinese-Canadian mayor

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SCMP: Hong Kong emigrant Meena Wong launches bid to become Vancouver’s first Chinese-Canadian mayor

Left-leaning candidate pledges to tackle problem of unaffordable housing, citing Hong Kong as an example to follow

Meena Wong pledged to make housing affordability a key platform of her campaign for the November election. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Hong Kong emigrant Meena Wong has launched a bid to become the first Chinese mayor of Vancouver, one of the most Chinese cities in the world outside Asia.

Wong, the daughter of doctors who fled mainland China for Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution, on Sunday was declared the mayoral nominee of the left-leaning Coalition of Progressive Electors (Cope). She was the only contender at a meeting of Cope’s members.

She formally announced her candidacy on Friday with a speech on the steps of City Hall, in which she described Vancouver as a “city of immigrants”, and pledged to make housing affordability a key platform of her campaign for the November election. Despite having among the lowest incomes in Canada, Vancouver has by far the nation’s highest real estate prices, making it the world’s second most unaffordable housing market, behind only Hong Kong.

The city, which is 28 per cent ethnic Chinese, has become a magnet for wealthy mainland “investor migrants”, yet it also has a large homeless population. The average price of a detached house in Greater Vancouver is more than C$1.2 million (HK$8.54 million).

“I believe that every single resident of Vancouver … deserves respect. To build a healthy community, respect is a fundamental ingredient, no matter who you are – whether you’re a millionaire or living on the street. Respect means that everyone’s voice is heard,” Wong, 53, said in her speech.

Cope, which was once a leading force in city politics and won the mayoralty in 2002, has recently suffered several years of decline, triggered by a party split in 2005 which resulted in the establishment of the centre-left Vision Vancouver team. Vision’s Gregor Robertson has been mayor since 2008.

Cope has not run a mayoral candidate since Vision’s creation to avoid splitting the city’s left-leaning electorate, a tactic which has helped Robertson crush rivals from the right-leaning Non-Partisan Association (NPA) in the last two elections.

However, Vision’s close relationship with the city’s wealthy real estate developers has inspired a growing level of discontent among Cope members and other leftist activists, with coalition stalwart Tim Louis deriding Vision as “the NPA with bicycle lanes”. Robertson was also criticised in March for taking part in a lunch organised by prominent real estate marketer Bob Rennie, who asked invitees to donate C$25,000 to Vision for the privilege of breaking bread with the mayor.

Robertson and Vision have favoured an industry-led approach to tackling homelessness and unaffordability in Vancouver, with developers required to create or fund social housing in order to get their projects approved.

Wong – who is hoping to become Vancouver’s first woman mayor – said in her speech that she would listen to the community when it came to real estate matters. “If a community gives input about condo development, like in Marpole or Grandview-Woodland [neighbourhoods that are facing major rezoning to accommodate increases in housing density], it will be my job as mayor to ensure that their input and wishes are respected,” Wong said.

Cope and Wong have advocated the creation of a Vancouver housing authority to build social and affordable housing. In a report issued in April, Cope’s housing committee looked to Hong Kong among other cities for ideas. “The Hong Kong experience shows that public housing benefits other social, economic and political aspects of the city, and that cultural embeddedness of high density public housing can be normalised,” the report said.

Wong cited Hong Kong in an interview with The Georgia Straight newspaper last week as she addressed the issue of affordable housing. “Hong Kong has over 50 per cent housing built by the city, by the government, that’s catered towards affordability, some for rental, some for ownership. Why can’t Vancouver do something like that? That’s what I question,” she said.

She has also pledged to improve child-care affordability and availability, boost public transport and impose a living wage policy for jobs within the city’s remit.

Wong – who speaks Cantonese, Putonghua, Shanghainese, English and French – was born in Beijing but moved to Hong Kong in the early 1970s at the age of 11. Eight years later, she` moved to Vancouver as an international student, then to Toronto where she got involved in left-wing community activism and became an assistant to fellow Hong Kong emigrant Olivia Chow. Chow is currently running for the mayoralty of Toronto against incumbent Rob Ford.