Voting for Vancouver’s mayor, city council, park board and school board runs from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, with plebiscites on public safety and three Capital Plan borrowing questions on the ballot.
The Story
Vancouver’s municipal election day is underway Saturday, with voting taking place between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Residents can cast their ballots at any of the city’s 85 voting places.
The vote will determine who leads Vancouver for the next four years. Incumbent Mayor Ken Sim is seeking a second term, running with ABC Vancouver, along with Pete Fry (Green Party), Kareem Allam (Vancouver Liberals), Colleen Hardwick (TEAM for a Livable Vancouver), Rebecca Bligh (Vote Vancouver), Muhammad Ahmad (Bright Future Vancouver), and independent candidates Amauri Caliman and Scott Gilbert.
Voters will also elect the 10 members of Vancouver City Council, with candidates from ABC, the Greens, COPE, OneCity and others competing for seats. In addition, seven Park Board commissioners and nine Vancouver School Board trustees are on the ballot.
A record-breaking 103,000 people voted in advance, up 60 per cent from roughly 65,000 voters over five advance days in 2022.
Among the mayoral candidates’ stated priorities, Sim says he is campaigning for another term with his right-of-centre ABC Vancouver party and has promised a zero-per-cent increase in property taxes as part of his platform. Fry, a three-term councillor and the son of longtime Liberal MP Hedy Fry, says his platform focuses on housing, transportation and the economy, adding that “Folks should be able to have a good life in this city.”
Allam, Sim’s former chief of staff, says he wants to “bring youth back to Vancouver” by improving affordability through jobs and housing, and by investing in parks and community centres, and he has said his platform cuts across ideologies while distancing himself from Sim.
Bligh is a two-term councillor who says she is running to govern for Vancouver’s “ignored middle class” as a progressive candidate with a centrist platform. She says Sim’s property tax freezes protect wealthy landowners and undercut critical services, and she adds that she would work with the federal government to leverage city-owned land and provide free transit for youth. Hardwick, a former councillor, says livability depends on effective city planning and says she wants to repeal the city’s official development plan and re-establish neighbourhood planning offices.
The election ballot includes two plebiscite questions on public safety. One non-binding question asks voters if they are in favour of the city “strengthening its laws to forbid open-air hard drug use in public spaces,” which is already illegal in B.C. The other asks whether the city should request the province convert portions of the old St. Paul’s Hospital into a “secure medical facility” with 100-plus involuntary care beds.
Sim says strengthening the city’s health bylaw—regulating conduct such as smoking in common areas—would allow officers to issue tickets or confiscate drugs without arrests, and he says the involuntary care question is about asking the province to fulfil its accountability to people who pose a risk to their own safety or others. Fry says he supports managing drug use in public spaces but differs from Sim by believing people should be diverted to supervised consumption sites or shelters. Hardwick called the questions a “populist election tactic.”
Alongside the plebiscites, the ballot includes three Capital Plan borrowing questions centred on transportation and street infrastructure; community-serving and civic-essential infrastructure; and parks and open public spaces infrastructure. Residents across British Columbia are also voting for mayors and councillors in their communities.
scope
← More stories