#VanPoli | Vancouver Council’s Priorities Early in Their New Term of Office

October 21, 2026#VanElxn 2026, #VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, City Development Planning, Housing, News, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2026abc vancouver, annette reilly, city budget, City Councillor, cope, cope: the coalition of progressive electors, CTV News Vancouver, Equity Office, green party of vancouver, housing co-operatives, Isabella Zavarise, lucy maloney, mike klassen, pete fry, renter's office, sean orr, transparency, vancouver city hallRaymond Tomlin

(Re-published article, written by Isabella Zavarise for CTV Vancouver News)

Vancouver Councillors Pledge to Reverse Previous Council’s Decisions

Vancouver City Councillors say they’re ready to get to work and deliver on their campaign promises, following a new term that will see a left-leaning council led by the city’s first Green Party Mayor.

On Saturday, Vancouverites elected four Councillors from COPE and the Vancouver Green Party, as well as Lucy Maloney with One City and ABC’s Mike Klassen.

The Greens and COPE are already committing to some shared promises such as reviewing the city’s budget.

COPE City Councillor Sean Orr, who received the highest number of votes of any Council candidate, with 83,038, said that will be one of his first priorities following inauguration in November.

“We didn’t see a lot of transparency in the last budget,” he said.

“It was famously very small. It wasn’t line-by-line. So, we need to go in and look at that and see the mess that we can clean up, see some opportunities as well for some cost savings.”

Annette Reilly, a newly elected City Councillor with the Greens, agreed, adding that once the budget is reviewed, the party would like to re-introduce some of the initiatives that were scrapped in the previous four years under ABC, such as the Renters Office which was shuttered in 2023, and the Equity Office which closed last year.

Reilly said she wants to champion renewing leases for co-ops, and address faster permitting for child-care spaces.

“That’s something I’d like to focus on right away,” she said.

Both Orr, Maloney and Reilly support reversing the ban on net-new supportive housing.

Orr said he will also be initiating a motion to bring back the city’s Living Wage Policy, which was scrapped in January, and will advocate for greater funding for libraries and recreation centers.

“Vancouver does have a lot of money, and we can fully fund the things that make Vancouver great, like our arts organizations,” he said.

COPE’s platform included a mansion tax, which would impose a one per cent tax on homes over $5 million to pay for public housing.

“We definitely think that there’s a lot of wealth in Vancouver, and that wealth can be redistributed,” said Orr.

As for the Vancouver Police budget, Orr said he believes there will be cost savings there.

He added that he supports the Greens’ campaign promise to introduce a Community Response Outreach Workers Team to respond to non-emergency calls regarding homelessness, public intoxication, and mental health crises.

“Getting mental health off of the plate of the police,” Orr said.

“We know that they don’t want to be doing that work either, and we need to be addressing that proactively, not re-actively.”

Both Orr and Reilly added they’re looking forward to the next term, and plan to work across party lines.

Lucy Maloney, with One City, said, “Vancouver residents have clearly expressed their desire for a progressive majority working collaboratively.”

Maloney added she’s committed to deliver results residents expect, “by drawing on our diverse perspectives.”

ABC’s Mike Klassen shared a similar sentiment, adding he looks forward to working constructively with his colleagues, regardless of political affiliation.

“I recognize that my role this term will be different, but I’ll seek common ground wherever possible while ensuring Vancouverites have a strong, independent voice at City Hall.”

There is a great deal of work to be undertaken by the incoming Vancouver Council.

#BCPoli | A Must-Read Note from Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West

October 20, 2026#CdnPoli | Canadian Politics, BC Politics, canadian politics, Politicsaffordable housing, brad west, community centres, delivering services, ideology, port coquitlam, property taxes, respect for people, snow removal, social housingRaymond Tomlin

Thoughts From The Campaign Trail! | Brad West

As we look at election results from across the province, there is no doubt that voters have sent a message.

I know there will be plenty of commentators offering their interpretations of what that message is. I wanted to share a few thoughts about what I believe voters are trying to tell us.

People are looking for competence from their government, not ideology.

Politics can sometimes attract people who are more motivated by a desire to reshape society in their own image than by the practical responsibilities of governing. But I don’t believe that’s where most voters are.

First and foremost, people want government to do its job. They want it to deliver the basic services we all depend on, and to deliver them well. At the municipal level, that means good recreation centres, clean parks, potholes filled, snow removed, safe neighbourhoods and responsible management of property taxes.

Getting the basics right has been my mantra since the day I walked into City Hall. And I believe the people of Port Coquitlam have responded to that approach. Second, people want results they can actually see and feel. That means being upfront, honest and realistic about what we can accomplish.

Increasingly, I see politicians making grandiose promises designed to capture attention and win votes, even when those promises are completely detached from reality. And when those promises inevitably go unfulfilled, the damage goes well beyond the politician who made them. It erodes people’s trust and confidence in government itself.

That’s one of the reasons I place so much importance on delivering core public services exceptionally well.

It doesn’t mean government shouldn’t be ambitious. Quite the opposite. We should have big aspirations for our communities and our province. We should want to tackle difficult problems and make life better for people. But we also have to be honest about what is possible, realistic about what it takes, and accountable for what we promise.

Focusing on the basics: With the lowest property taxes in the Metro Vancouver region over the past eight years, Mayor Brad West and Council still managed to build and open a new community centre in each of their two terms in office, while at the same time building social and affordable housing.

When government consistently gets the small things right, it earns the trust and confidence necessary to take on the bigger challenges.

Finally, I think people are looking for a return to some normalcy in our politics.

Re-elected COPE Councillor Sean Orr has emerged as the thoughtful voice of a generation, the reasoning and most reasonable political figure to emerge in Vancouver politics in decades.

I think people are exhausted by politics built around division, hostility and the demonization of anyone who happens to see the world differently. I can’t think of many other parts of our lives where we would consider that acceptable behaviour.

When I’m at the rink or the field watching my two boys, I talk with other parents who have all kinds of different opinions and perspectives. We don’t necessarily agree about politics or everything happening in the world. But I can tell you one thing we do agree on. We all want our kids to be happy, healthy and have the best possible shot at a good life. And I think that says something important about who we really are.

I don’t believe the public is nearly as divided as some politicians would have us believe. I don’t believe we’re locked in some do-or-die struggle where one side has all the answers and everyone on the other side is beyond redemption. That’s not how we behave in our families. It’s not how we behave at work. It’s not how we behave on teams. And it’s not how we should behave in our politics.

We can disagree without being enemies. We can have different beliefs without questioning one another’s character. And we can recognize that, despite our differences, most of us want many of the same things for ourselves, our families and our communities.

I believe there’s far more that brings us together than pulls us apart.

And I believe government works best when it focuses on those things we have in common, earns the public’s trust through actions and results (usually smaller, incremental ones), and stays firmly planted where the vast majority of normal people are.

#VanPoli | Change is on The Near Horizon | Hope

October 19, 2026#VanElxn 2026, #VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2026advisory committees, annette reilly, bridget burns, camil dumont, chloe leslie, cope: the coalition of progressive electors, devyani singh, green party of vancouver, lucy maloney, mayor pete fry, mike klassen, peter armstrong, sean orr, shawn vulliez, solomon yi-kieran, stephanie smith, vancouver city hallRaymond Tomlin

Council: Unofficial 2026 Vancouver Election Results

Mayor (one to be elected)

FRY, Pete – GREEN: 98,494

At the end of the day, the 2026 Vancouver municipal election came down to a two-way race between two-term Green City Councillor Pete Fry, and ABC Vancouver Mayoral incumbent, Ken Sim. The other three high-profile Mayoral contenders then became collateral damage in the pitched battle as to who would sit in the Mayor’s office, and chair Council meetings — beginning in the afternoon after the Inauguration of the new Council — on Monday, November 2nd through the 2030 municipal election, on as an yet undecided date.

Peter Armstrong, NPA / ABC Vancouver President, owner of the Rocky Mountaineer

On Election Day 2014, VanRamblings spent day the with Peter Armstrong (Peter is a friend, whom we love with our whole soul, body and entire heart) — the then President of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA), and the owner of the Rocky Mountaineer — at NPA Election Day headquarters, in the ballroom at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver.

At 11am, Peter got a call from Dimitri Pantazopoulos — the longtime Stephen Harper pollster, pollster for ABC Vancouver, and current Deputy Manager of the Conservative Party of B.C. election campaign — who told Peter that NPA Mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe was running 15 points ahead of Gregor Robertson, according to their Friday night polling.

At 4pm, Peter got another call from Dimitri — explaining that Kirk was now running 15 points behind Gregor Robertson, the extensive exit polling showing that voters believed both Gregor Robertson and Kirk LaPointe stood for pretty much the same thing, and voters were making the decision to cast their ballot for Gregor over Kirk, “the devil they knew, over the devil they didn’t know.”

That is pretty much the same story in 2026.

Where Vancouver Liberals internal polling showed that their Mayoral candidate, Kareem Allam, was pretty much taking over Ken Sim’s vote on Vancouver’s west side — Point Grey, Dunbar, Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy, that had Allam polling at 22%, and in a statistical dead heat with Ken Sim — on Election Day, Saturday, October 17th, Allam’s vote collapsed and returned to Ken Sim, so fearful were right-of-centre voters about the potential for a “progressive Mayor”, in the form of Pete Fry. Both TEAM’s Colleen Hardwick and Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh suffered from a similar fate at the polls on Election Day.

Councillors (10 to be elected)

1. ORR, Sean – COPE: 83,038
2. REILLY, Annette – GREEN: 78,476
3. LESLIE, Chloe – COPE: 67,791
4. SINGH, Devyani – COPE: 65,473
5. SMITH, Stephanie – GREEN: 64,070
6. MALONEY, Lucy – OneCity: 63,143
7. DUMONT, Camil – GREEN: 62,540
8. YI-KIERAN, Solomon – COPE: 60,361
9. KLASSEN, Mike – ABC Vancouver: 57,798
10. BURNS, Bridget – GREEN: 57,788

As we have previously written, in many ways the 2026 election reminds us very much of the 2002 Vancouver municipal election.

In 2002, incumbent Non-Partisan Association (NPA) City Councillor Jennifer Clarke staged a right wing coup to unseat popular NPA Mayor Philip Owen as Mayor of the City of Vancouver, arising from her unhappiness with Mayor Owen’s implementation of his innovative and humane Four Pillars Drug Policy, which constituted a novel strategy pioneered in Switzerland representing a tectonic shift from treating substance use as a criminal justice issue towards a public health approach. The approach placed an equal focus on harm reduction, prevention, treatment, and enforcement.

Jennifer Clarke’s bid to unseat the NPA’s popular, grassroots Mayor was successful, and in 2002 Jennifer Clarke presented herself to the Vancouver voting public as the standard bearer for the Non-Partisan Association (NPA). Pundits, politicos and the media felt quite assured that Ms. Clarke would sail to victory, for a 5th consecutive term to form a majority NPA Council. Some of us weren’t quite so sure.

In 2002, Vancouver City Council had only two elected COPE members on Council: Fred Bass and Tim Louis. The members and electeds of the Non-Partisan Association were confident that they would once again sweep Council, Park Board and School Board, as they had for the previous 12 years, and for much of the 20th century.

Of course, as happens so often, all of this political calculation failed to account for how the general public viewed Ms. Clarke’s unseemly unseating of the city’s favourite Mayor.

When the 2002 Vancouver municipal election rolled around, COPE swept Council (8 of 10 seats), swept Park Board (5 of 7 seats), and swept all the open positions around the Board of Education table (taking 7 of 9 seats), with the Greens’ Andrea Reimer holding down the 9th spot, with the Vancouver School Board.

So, for VanRamblings, the sweep of all three civic bodies by COPE and the Greens (with OneCity doing well on School Board, and re-electing OneCity’s Lucy Maloney for Council) in 2026 came as no particular surprise. Clearly, the voters of Vancouver were anxious to rid themselves of the stain of the mean-spirited civic administration of Mayor Ken Sim, and his lickspittle contingent of ABC Vancouver City Councillors.

Perhaps the most hopeful interaction VanRamblings had on Saturday evening — apart from all the hugs we received from good-hearted folks at the Vancouver Liberals Saturday night event, and at COPE’s Victory Party at the Japanese School on Alexander Street — occurred as we were nearing the entrance of the COPE party, when we ran across COPE fundraiser Gabe Goodman — flat out, one of our favourite people in the world! — who greeted us, and said …

“Thank you for taking the time to attend COPE’s Victory Party tonight, and spend time with the hundreds of good folks and staunch supporters of COPE, who you’ll see inside. Along with almost everyone else I know, I am an inveterate reader of VanRamblings, and I want to assure you, Raymond, that a key component of how the newly-elected and the re-elected members of COPE will bring themselves to their work is with kindness as a core value. I know you’ve written about the necessity of kindness in civic life. COPE has taken that notion to heart, as a core strength of our party.”

And, finally, a note to Shawn Vulliez, COPE’s very able, genius campaign manager.

Shawn Vulliez, left, COPE’s campaign manager, and Sean Orr, topping the polls for Council

Shawn: We recommend you turn your attention — working / consulting with Mayor-elect Pete Fry — to staffing the Selection Committee of Council, whose three members will choose among the thousands of applications that will be made to fill the 300+ positions that will soon be posted and made available to the public, whose members will sit on the very important Advisory Boards to Council. Might we suggest that COPE’s Devyani Singh (or Sean Orr, who might be too busy!) and Solomon Yi-Kieran sit as members of the Selection Committee, along with the Greens’ Stephanie Smith. Whatever decision you and Mayor-elect Fry arrive at will be the right decision. The Selection Committee — of which Mayor-elect Fry has been a member for the past four years — is critical to the new Council putting into place Advisory Board members who best reflect the values and civic goals of the citizens of Vancouver, and our newly-elected Vancouver City Council.

Might we suggest, as well, that you give some consideration to encouraging COPE supporter and longtime community activist Ian Marcuse — whose work on the Grandview Woodland Food Connection has supported low-income and vulnerable residents in East Vancouver — as well as the Seniors Community Kitchen, where accessible cooking and social spaces designed to support older adults in the neighbourhood has existed to support vulnerable members of our seniors population.

Now, we know that Ian would be a perfect candidate for the Vancouver Food Policy Council (VFPC) Advisory Committee, but we’d sure like to see Ian sit as a member of the Board of Variance — often referred to as the most powerful creature of civic government — where we first met Mr. Marcuse 20+ years ago, when we were sitting as a member on the COPE-dominated Board of Variance.

And don’t forget social activist and artist Irwin Oostindie, who founded the Under the Volcano Festival of Art & Social Change, and worked as the Planning Director of the Wild Bird Trust of BC in North Vancouver, which focused on decolonizing conservation, restoration and research based at Maplewood Flats, on the unceded sel̓íl̓witulh/Tsleil-Waututh lands and waters — among myriad other projects with which Irwin has been involved.

We think Irwin would make for an outstanding member of Vancouver’s City Planning Commission, a Council-appointed citizens’ advisory body that counsels Vancouver City Council on matters including housing, the public realm, neighbourhoods, transportation, and public engagement. Just sayin’ … a little food for thought.

As for us, we’re giving some consideration to making application to Vancouver’s Older Persons and Elders Advisory Committee (OPEAC) when the posting is made — cuz, you know, we’re kind of getting older now — which committee advises Vancouver City Council and staff on improving access, inclusion, and services for aging residents.