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by Joseph Roberts
Fred Bass has served two terms as a city councilor under COPE. He has stood firmly against the spread of gambling and has fought the RAV line with the belief that it would misdirect billions of dollars. As the lead in Vancouver’s area transit plan, he ensured public consultation and a front line transit operator’s advisory committee. He is a strong advocate for more social and co-op housing and increased treatment, housing, and rehabilitation services for people with addictions.
Common Ground: How did you get involved in politics?
Fred Bass: In 1990, I served on the Clouds of Change Task Force, which looked at global warming and what Vancouver should do about it. It seemed clear that global warming should be taken seriously and that the response would call for major behavioural change at the individual level, and in the current government and corporations.
Having seen and been part of implementing major change around cigarette smoking in society, I had learned something about how to facilitate change in a community. I also learned that if you want to change the world, you are most likely to accomplish it at the city council level.
CG: Before you were involved in politics, you were involved in implementing social change.
FB: As a preventive medicine physician, I had become engaged in wrestling with the “brown plague,” the cigarette-smoking epidemic that began in the 20th century. My work ranged from counselling individual smokers, to working with groups of smokers, to advocating for eliminating exposure to second-hand smoke, to recognizing the irresponsible behaviour of tobacco companies that continued to promote and market their addictive, lethal products after the best minds in medicine and public health had told them that their products were killing their customers.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the US in 1968, I became active in the civil rights movement and became chair of the Maryland Medical Committee for Human Rights. At both Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, we provided medical care for the Poor Peoples’ Campaign, an encampment in Washington, DC to protest poverty.
I would trace my activism back to my college in Antioch, Ohio, where a monument on the front campus quoted the college’s founder Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
CG: What is most needed in the world today and how does it translate to Vancouver?
FB: We are in an ecological and social crisis worldwide, in which we in the First World are overspending our share of nature by consuming irreplaceable resources and fouling our nest, our food, and our water with pollution of various sorts. Our species is doing a radical experiment with the planet, in terms of driving up atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. We cannot continue on this course and must treat our situation as an emergency. Unfortunately, the Third World is following in our footsteps, principally due to the unhealthy influence of western governments and some multinational corporations.
Vancouver’s present municipal government, a COPE city council, has directly addressed these issues through a number of initiatives, including the Climate Change Action Plan, which is also known as Cool Vancouver; the Food Policy Task Force; the ethical purchasing policy; establishing a Peace and Justice Committee, which is hosting the World Peace Forum in 2006; and the Women’s Task Force on women’s involvement in politics.
CG: What is closest to your heart these days?
FB: My family – my wife Roma, all our children, and the various young people who inhabit our household – is very important to me and a great source of comfort. I work very long hours and don’t have enough time for my family or myself, or visiting the mountains, or listening to music. As you asked me that question, I heard the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto from the neighbouring building. Music, particularly Mozart piano concertos, Brazilian chorinos, and street samba is very nourishing for me.
CG: What was your position on gambling, specifically slot machines?
FB: I have always opposed the expansion of gambling, particularly slot machines. To me, the government use of money derived from gambling represents an unfair tax on vulnerable brains, since 40 percent of the gross from gambling comes from the five to 10 percent of people who are addicted, or at risk of becoming addicted. Furthermore, I think gambling represents a poor strategy for economic development.
CG: What happened with your involvement in the RAV line, and did you get kicked off the TransLink board because of your opposition to RAV?
FB: I voted against RAV from the beginning for several reasons: first, there was never a head-to-head comparison of either route [Cambie vs Arbutus], or technology [rapid bus vs. light rail vs. SkyTrain]. Second, there was no clear, long-term plan, which evaluated all the major projects facing TransLink in terms of their benefits and costs. Third, it was not clear where all the money was going to come from, especially after the failure of the car levy to fund the 2000 plan. Fourth, a public-private partnership to design, build, operate, and finance the biggest civic investment ever seen in Vancouver was a poor choice; and finally, I know enough about transit to realize that our first priority should be getting an adequate bus fleet. Today, we are 500 buses behind what we were supposed to have by 2006, according to the 2000 plan.
Did my position on RAV cause me to get kicked off the TransLink board? I wasn’t kicked off the board. Rather, I was not re-appointed to the TransLink board in my second year, likely because of my position on RAV.
CG: Which transportation solutions will work best for Vancouver in the long run?
FB: First, active transportation – walking, cycling, and transit – will work best. These are the 1997 Vancouver transportation plan’s top priorities in that order. Active transportation makes people happier and healthier – less obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and depression – and costs individuals and government much less than continuing to cover the costs generated by the single occupancy vehicle. It also generates less air pollution. This means that we need to facilitate walking, create more cycle paths, and promote cycling and more effective transit services, by increasing the number of available buses and by implementing the Vancouver area transit plan by 2010.
CG: Why did Mayor Larry Campbell and three councillors break away from COPE?
FB: You will have to get that answer from them. COPE stands for the Coalition of Progressive Electors, and a coalition means having a broad range of people under the tent. Perhaps the range was too broad for those who left COPE.
CG: What are your thoughts on the current school and parks boards?
FB: COPE school board members did a brilliant job of communicating with staff and changing the culture of that bureaucracy. It also stood up to the provincial government when it cut vital resources for education. It promoted programs for anti-bullying, anti-racism, and anti-homophobia, and for healthy food choices in schools. The COPE parks board improved accessibility in the parks, began necessary construction of community centres, and promoted water conservation and use of alternative energy sources.
CG: What about fiscal responsibility?
FB: If you compare the COPE council’s percent-increase in municipal tax rates to NPA’s increases, they are strikingly similar. Perhaps, COPE averages about $15 more per household annually. Many people don’t know that the Vancouver Charter does not allow the City of Vancouver to go into debt. Our finance people run a tight ship and we have a healthy property endowment fund, which all adds up to our having a very favourable credit rating. According to Moody’s rating service, the minus sign was added to Vancouver’s AAA rating because of the increased debt assumed by the GVRD and TransLink, escalated by the RAV project.
Q: How were you involved with Vancouver’s Walk for Peace in 1982, and what can the city do now to foster friendship and understanding in the world?
FB: In 1982, I was the first director of health promotion for the Vancouver Health Department. The Harcourt government had decided to accept the invitation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to demonstrate concern about the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The City of Vancouver supported the first Walk for Peace by endorsing it and distributing a leaflet to 175,000 Vancouver households, explaining the risks of nuclear weapons and asking citizens to attend the Walk for Peace. I had the honour of preparing that pamphlet with my wife’s help.
The COPE council recently committed to supporting the World Peace Forum that will meet in Vancouver next year, just after the gathering of municipal politicians and staff from around the world at the World Urban Forum in June. In this time of danger, due to the propagation of war, it is essential to our species that Vancouver does a good job with the World Peace Forum.
CG: What changes would you like to achieve both at the council level and personally?
FB: I would like to make sure that we continue what the COPE council started: the Climate Change Action Plan, the Food Policy Task Force, the ethical purchasing policy, and the Women’s Task Force. As council liaison to the Vancouver/UBC transit plan for 2004 and 2005, [adopted unanimously by both Vancouver council and the TransLink board] by 2010, I want to see implemented the six bus routes and the new standards for both minimizing passenger crowding and increasing frequency of service.
I have a dream that Vancouver develop a “centre for understanding ecosystems” to help all interested persons and organizations understand how ecosystems work. I would like to see us become an example to the world as the most eco-literate region on the planet. After the industrial and information-age revolutions, the ecological revolution is coming soon. I think our city should lead the world in this regard.
CG: Why is there such a presence of drugs and prostitution at Hastings and Main, next to one of Vancouver’s main police stations?
FB: Drugs and prostitution are not, primarily, police problems. Yes, they cause disorder, but the War on Drugs has failed.
I am a physician who is extensively trained, with a masters in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health and also a doctor of science in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. I have passed the examination of the American Society for Addiction Medicine and have spent 38 years working in tobacco addiction.
Addiction is the compulsive use of a psychoactive drug accompanied by great difficulty in stopping use because of biological and psychosocial factors. It is a health problem with implications for policing, but with even more implications for healthcare, housing, education and training systems.
A recent study of repeat offenders, sponsored by the justice system, correctly identified the lack of available, continuous care for addictions as a major determinant of repeat offenders’ criminal acts. It is time that a comprehensive system of care, housing and rehabilitation services is made broadly available to the less fortunate among us.
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