Vancouver— “It is 186 days until the Oct. 20, 2018 Vancouver municipal election!”

That’s how Matthew Naylor, Ian Bushfield and Patrick Meehan start every episode of their weekly Cambie Report podcast.

The three friends really, really care about local politics and they want to share their deeply nerdy passion with the people of Vancouver. Their first episode delved into the history of Vancouver municipal politics and special guests have included pollster Mario Canseco, civic affairs reporter Frances Bula and historian Erin Reddekop.

Naylor, 30, is a law student who has supported the federal liberals and B.C. Liberals and describes his political leanings as “progressive centre-right;” Bushfield, 32, works at a non-profit and tends to lean NDP, as does Meehan, a 32-year-old policy analyst.

Non of the podcasters have yet made up their mind about whether they support a specific Vancouver civic party.

“I wanted to live here and this is where I want to make my home for the rest of my life and I am filled with the fury of a thousand suns because the municipal government seems to be not super great in my opinion at addressing some of the problems that have come forward,” Naylor said of his motivation to spend his spare time podcasting.

Municipal elections have much lower participation than federal or provincial races, and people tend to know less about municipal politics. Naylor, Bushfield and Meehan want to change that.

“Youth are turning on to politics in a big way over the last couple years, and you can be really interested in politics and not know whose decision is doing what. It’s really common for people to get really angry at the city for not doing something only the province can do,” said Meehan.

“I really like the idea of going into why parties have the positions they have and what different levels of government can do, and making sure we expand that education.”

The podcast has been getting around 450 downloads per episode, a figure Bushfield, Naylor and Meehan say they’re happy with, and has gotten some shout-outs from veteran political watchers like Sam Sullivan, a former Vancouver mayor and current B.C. Liberal MLA, and Gordon Price, a former city councillor.

“That’s one thing I like about the podcast as a format is that most of them aren’t strictly non-partisan, so we can have our opinions and what I found … is even though we come from partisan perspectives, we can take shots at our own team and recognize where they’ve failed,” Bushfield said.

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Jen St. Denis is a general assignment reporter based in Vancouver. Follow her on Twitter: @jenstden

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