Dan Fumano: After a very weird week at Vancouver city hall, a local labour leader confirmed to Postmedia that her union asked allies from outside of Canada to phone into Vancouver council in an attempt to influence a contentious urban planning decision.
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AI slop and foreign influence arrived at Vancouver City Hall on Wednesday evening in what may have been the city’s strangest council meeting in at least a decade.
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Tuesday’s public hearing was bizarre enough, when several representatives of a local hotel workers’ union were accused of filibustering, which included the use of supposed “translators” — one of whom confessed when pressed by councillors that they did not actually speak the language they purported to be translating.
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But then Wednesday’s late-night meeting blew away the previous evening in terms of weirdness, when several people phoned in to address council, and then confessed, when asked, that they were phoning from California.
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When pressed by councillors, many of these speakers admitted they had never been to Vancouver. When asked why they decided to phone in from California to attempt to influence an urban planning proposal in Vancouver, they offered very similar, flimsy, and seemingly scripted explanations.
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Many said they worried about the “precedent” that Vancouver’s “villages plan” could set for their community. At least one caller said her speaking notes were prepared using artificial intelligence software.
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Councillors, bewildered, asked speakers whether they had any affiliation with a hotel union.
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At Tuesday evening’s public hearing, several members of Unite Here Local 40 addressed council. At least three of them — Local 40 president Zailda Chan, as well as organizers Cristina Figueroa and Preet Sangha — spoke through translators on Tuesday, although all three addressed council in fluent English at a May meeting to oppose fast-tracking small hotels in different neighbourhoods. ABC Coun. Brian Montague accused the speakers of using translators they did not really need — who, in some cases, weren’t even actually translating — in order to “waste time” and “filibuster.”
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Unite Here Local 40 is the largest union representing hotel workers throughout B.C., and this year seems to be escalating its participation in City of Vancouver politics, taking the city to court over planned hotel projects, flooding public hearings to oppose developments including new hotels as well as market and non-market housing, and hiring paid canvassers to work until October’s election on a campaign to “take back City Hall.”
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Members of Unite Here’s Vancouver local also spoke at Wednesday’s hearing regarding the villages plan — city staff’s proposal to add commercial and residential density to 17 hubs around town. But things took a bizarre turn later that evening, when the out-of-town callers admitted they were from California.
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The names of several speakers who identified themselves Wednesday as out-of-town callers match with people affiliated with Unite Here’s Los Angeles chapter.
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A caller introducing himself as Garret Montoya told Vancouver council he worried about what the villages plan could mean for sidewalk upgrades and bus frequency. A LinkedIn page for Garret Montoya-Jancich identifies him as a full-time political organizer for Unite Here Local 11 in Los Angeles.
