Charlie Smith, The Georgia Straight

Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson has been invited to participate in a prestigious monthly debate on environmental issues hosted by the president of France’s parliament, Claude Bartolone. The Tuesday (May 5) event will also feature Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo in a main ballroom at the Hôtel de Lassay, where Bartolone lives.

Marsha Lederman, The Globe and Mail

By the Huffington Post B.C.

Gregor Robertson, who is running for a third term as Vancouver mayor, logged onto Reddit Thursday to field questions from voters. In an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") format, Robertson was asked about affordable housing, transit, proposed pipeline expansion, and the city's tech sector.

Robertson's AMA is the last of three, organized by The Huffington Post B.C. and the Vancouver subreddit. Mayoral challengers Kirk LaPointe of the NPA and Meena Wong of COPE both did AMAs earlier this month.

The Vancouver municipal election is on Nov. 15.

Here are some highlights from the Vision Vancouver candidate's AMA:

By Mike Hager

Vancouver can always rely on B.C.’s vast resource sector to be an economic engine for the city, but the real opportunity for growth is in incubating more tech and digital media start-ups and luring bigger firms like Amazon to set up shop.

That’s according to Vision Vancouver’s four-year economic plan for the city, which continues the party’s longtime boosting of those sectors and includes several new proposals like supporting an informal system of classes to teach people digital skills such as coding, as well as working with start-ups to make the industrial areas they often inhabit safer and easier to get to via transit.

“Resource industries are here, they’re part of Vancouver’s economic success and they always will be,” Mayor Gregor Robertson said at a quiet campaign news conference held Sunday inside the soon-to-be-opened Telus Garden tower. “Six years ago people weren’t talking about Microsoft, Amazon, Sony Imageworks, HootSuite — digital companies that have moved here.

By Emily Jackson

The Non-Partisan Association’s plan to axe a city program that encourages developers to build rental units would be a “huge step backwards” for renters, Vision Vancouver argued Wednesday.

NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe, the top rival to incumbent Vision Mayor Gregor Robertson, said at a news conference Tuesday he would kill the Rental 100 program if he wins the Nov. 15 municipal election.

The program, established by Vision, gives developers breaks on parking and more density in return for promising the new units must remain rentals for 60 years or the life of the building, whichever is longer.

By Mike Howell

If re-elected with a majority, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his ruling Vision Vancouver party promise to spend $400,000 to double the amount of money dedicated to the Vancouver School Board’s breakfast program.

The budget for the program is currently at $200,000, all of it raised through charitable donations. The program serves 650 students breakfast every morning at 12 elementary schools.

The $400,000 would be provided from the city and means 1,300 students could receive breakfast, said Mayor Gregor Robertson at a press conference Thursday to announce his campaign promise.

By Frances Bula

Gregor Robertson kicked off his party’s election campaign by saying he will fight for a Broadway subway, unlike his main opponent, who the Vancouver Mayor says is a flip-flopper with only lukewarm enthusiasm for the much-needed east-west line.

But Mr. Robertson’s party can’t build the $3-billion line on its own and the mayor’s relationships with other governments are so bad that the city is unlikely to get money from them, Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe said in response.

Both agreed on one thing: That there’s a clear choice in front of Vancouver voters Nov. 15.

By Ian Bailey

The City of Vancouver is launching an agency to help figure out how to limit investor speculation in housing – a controversial issue in Vancouver’s inflated market certain to be debated in this fall’s municipal election.

Mayor Gregor Robertson, who will be seeking a third term in November, cast the Vancouver Affordable Housing Agency on Thursday as a “research hub” to help create 2,500 new affordable homes by 2021 – 500 of them in the first three years.