#VanPoli | 2026 Vancouver Mayoral Candidates | We Take No Prisoners | Part 1

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Kareem Allam. Who? You may not know the achingly bright Kareem Allam four months out today from the October 17th Vancouver municipal election. But by early October, when the advance polls open, you will, and we’re betting that you will cast your ballot for Kareem, and members of his Vancouver Liberals team. Kareem is the most well-schooled candidate to ever run for the Mayor’s office in the City of Vancouver, with the strongest and most well thought out and expansive policy platform of any of the candidates and parties seeking office in the 2026 Vancouver municipal election. In a word, Kareem is brilliant, Vancouver’s Zohran Mamdami, a charismatic and populist candidate, articulate, and collaborative.

In the coming months, VanRamblings will introduce you more thoroughly to this outstanding candidate for Mayor of our city, why it is we are enthusiastically supporting his candidacy, and why it is we believe far and away that he is the most qualified candidate for Mayor, seeking office in the 2026 Vancouver civic election.

Ken Sim. Not since the reign of error of Mayor Jack Volrich in the late 1970s, has Vancouver had a more inept, more morally corrupt, shambolic clusterfuck of a civic administration than has proved to be the case under the maladministration of the far too often absent and woefully under qualified Ken Sim, the occupant of the Mayor’s office in the City of Vancouver for most of the past four years.

Jettisoning the Fair Wage Programme at City Hall early on in his administration; shutting down the Rentals Office at City Hall; attempting to get rid of the City’s Integrity Commissioner even while he was under investigation; converting a Committee Room used by several of City Hall’s 33 Advisory Committees, in order that he could convert the meeting room into a personal gym for himself; shot gunning a flagon of beer from the stage at Khatsalano Days, which he attended early on in his administration, causing the children and parents who were present to recoil, aghast at Sim’s utter lack of judgement; attending meetings dressed in a T-shirt and sweat pants, when he bothered to turn up to vote at all (on the rare occasions when he deigned to participate in the decision-making at City Hall); vacationing with his billionaire friends at resort locales across the globe; championing gang and drug-related cryptocurrency to finance civic government; and perhaps worst of all — attacking City Councillors, as he filed one unfounded formal complaint after another on then OneCity Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle, now our province’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, while later on in his administration going on the attack in the most despicable manner possible against the honourable and incredibly hard working COPE City Councillor Sean Orr (who topped the polls in the 2025 Vancouver City by-election, who has emerged as the conscience of Vancouver’s civic administration), calling him a drug dealer in the Chinese press, for which untoward act he was officially sanctioned by the City of Vancouver’s Integrity Commissioner for his harmful and utterly spurious allegation.

The internal party polls conducted by various of Vancouver’s civic parties show Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver administration languishing around the 10% mark. Ken Sim is on his way out, as are most of his lickspittle  ABC City Councillors.

For VanRamblings, that can’t happen soon enough.

Pete Fry. Serving the public as a Vancouver City Councillor since first being elected to office under the Green Party of Vancouver banner on October 20 2018, Councillor Pete Fry has served the office with honour, integrity and distinction.

In a recent conversation with the distinguished Councillor Fry, our favourite City Councillor told VanRamblings how challenging this past term has proved to be under the bullying (VanRamblings’ word, not Pete’s) administration of Mayor Ken Sim. Vancouverites should thank our lucky stars that Pete Fry has emerged as an incredibly effective, if un-official, opposition to the morally bankrupt  ABC Vancouver civic administration under Mayor Ken Sim, as an empathetic and informed voice of reason, who has consistently well-represented the interests of not only those of us who twice elected him to office, but for all the citizens who call Vancouver home. On that front, Councillor Pete Fry is deserving of our support, and unending admiration for a necessary job well done. Thank you Councillor Fry!

Why, then, has VanRamblings chosen to support Kareem Allam as Vancouver’s next Mayor, over the accomplished and hard working Pete Fry? Well, partly because we believe Kareem Allam to be brilliant, and a gift to our city, with the potential to be the best Mayor our city has ever experienced. Kareem is well-funded, organized, experienced, has worked at the federal, provincial and civic levels of government, and is the best informed politico we have ever met, and interacted with. As we say, Pete Fry has consistently proved to be an admirable Vancouver City Councillor, deserving of our support — but, as a City Councillor (we believe that Pete will drop down to run for Council come early September), not Mayor.

Pete has said, on various stages, in the media, and on social platforms …

“It is the people of Vancouver, the citizens, the electorate, who will choose the next Mayor of Vancouver, and who will be elected to the next civic administration. Not me, not you, not any of the candidates seeking office in 2026 — but the citizens of our City who call Vancouver home. The wisdom of the citizens of Vancouver will carry the day. On Saturday, October 17th, on Election Night 2026, we will know which candidates have emerged as successful in their bid for civic office, who will form civic government, in keeping with the wishes, and the wisdom, of the electorate.”

And so it is, and so it will be. VanRamblings wishes Pete well in his endeavours.


The video is a year old, but at least it explicates Ms. Bligh’s intention to seek the Mayor’s chair

Rebecca Bligh. Running with her newly formed party, Vote Vancouver, Ms. Bligh was first elected to Vancouver City Council in 2018 under the banner of the Non-Partisan Association (NPA). Ms. Bligh and two of her NPA colleagues chose to leave the NPA following a right-wing takeover of Vancouver’s oldest civic party — formed in 1937 to oppose the CCF / the left-wing “progressive” forces.

In 2022, Ms. Bligh joined a new, nascent civic party, ABC Vancouver, where she sat as a Councillor before being expelled from that party on Valentine’s Day, 2025.

Now, we will say the we really like Rebecca, and that her partner Laura is the first person in 50 years who has VanRamblings’ number — she keeps us in line — and is not about to let us get away with any nonsense. We love being called out by people we know care about us, as misguided as we may be from time to time.

Here’s a little of what Ms. Bligh’s LinkedIn profile has to say about the esteemed Councillor ..

“Since 2018, Rebecca Bligh has acted as a director for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, serving currently as Chair of Governance, as well as the Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance with the City of Vancouver.

Outside of politics, Ms. Bligh is the founder of BLACKPiiN a consulting and facilitation practice providing leadership development to executives and teams, working with them to define, develop and implement strategies to enable success by uncovering how their leadership can achieve their desired results.

Passionate about giving back to her community, Rebecca has volunteered on boards and supported initiatives that give back to community; including recently established, Let’s Eat, and prior to 2018 the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation and Legado Initiatives, providing training and development in Ethiopia and Mozambique.”

In fact, Ms. Bligh served as President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) from late 2024, concluding her extended term (she was to have served only through June 2025) in late May of this year. During her tenure, Ms. Bligh functioned as the Chief National Advocate for Canadian municipalities, overseeing critical policy initiatives focused on the housing crisis, the poisoned drug epidemic, climate change, and community safety. All of which is to say that Ms. Bligh has the bona fides (and then some) to serve well as the City of Vancouver’s next Mayor.

Whether it is Rebecca Bligh, Pete Fry or Kareem Allam who you choose to cast a ballot for come October of this year, each of these three individuals we write about today would make a fine Mayor of our beloved city by the ocean.

On Thursday, we will write about four more relatively high profile aspirants to become the next Mayor of Vancouver, only one of whom we will recommend.

 

VanRamblings Makes Its Triumphant Return

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Two year old Elliott, on my bed with Teague the dog
December 2025

Following 7½ months of excruciating pain subsequent to my radical prostatectomy (prostate cancer surgery) on October 31, 2025, after all these months the pain has lessened to the extent that I can sit in a chair, in front of my computer, for an extended period of time. Thus, the re-emergence of VanRamblings.

Given what is going on municipally — particularly in Vancouver, with a record number of high profile candidates seeking to become Mayor post October 17th — provincially (with the deepening problems for Premier David Eby, and the provincial New Democrats, not to mention the ascendance of a far right leader of the BC Conservative Party) and federally, with a decided move to the right by Prime Minister Mark Carney, and his federal Liberal Party, as has been the case for many months, I am desirous of weighing in on all things political.

Although I had thought that I might take a different tack on how VanRamblings would approach covering the upcoming municipal election, perhaps emerging as a kinder, more thoughtful force for good in the writing you’ll be reading daily on this 22-year-young blog, I have of late arrived at the opinion that such change is unlikely to occur, that VanRamblings will continue to be what it has always been: an honest, straight forward, brutally entertaining,  and engaging reportorial accounting on all the “people in the game”, which is to say, those persons who have chosen to enter the political fray by offering themselves for public office.

Monday to Thursday, you can expect to read my analysis of the political scene, Fridays will provide coverage of cinema, Saturdays will be given over to Stories of a Life — long a staple on VanRamblings — and Sundays to the music I love.

All that begins tomorrow.

A great family: the absolutely tremendous Alasdair, Fergus, Meaghan and Elliott

Central to my recovery — not yet complete, but progressing —has been the support of the four persons you see pictured above, rugby and (British) football phenom Alasdair, now 7-year-old Fergus who I cared for during the pandemic and beyond (along with my neighbour, Heather, who I will write about in the months to come) — when Fergus’ child care centre closed down and he required care while his parents were at work — and wife, mom, librarian and friend extraordinaire, Meaghan, whose very existence gives my life meaning, and  on the right, 3-year-old Elliott — her name given to her by her brother — who is nothing short of a delight, both Fergus and Elliott, the most zen children I have ever known.

Raymond and Fergus, on a post pandemic walk, when Meaghan asked for a selfie

In the photo at the top of today’s column, Elliott in the bottom left hand corner of my bed, and lying by my side, as he did for three months, Teague the dog. At the foot of the bed, and outside the frame of the photo, my friend and personal health saviour, Kelly Ryan, and the aforementioned Heather and Meaghan, all three of whom,  together, have provided care and kindness, working collectively to save my life over the course of the past 7½ unimaginably challenging months.

At one point, Elliott — mature and far beyond her maturational markers — turned to Kelly (with whom I share Teague), and said to Kelly …

“I have a cat. I want a dog. But I have a cat. I have asked my mom and dad for a dog, but they said, ‘Not right now. Some day.’

I have a cat. I like the cat, but I want a dog.”

And with that, Elliott turned to pet Teague, as Kelly, Heather and Meaghan resumed their conversation.

The old, Movable Type VanRamblings header (above) which Mike Klassen — VanRamblings’ webmaster, and current Vancouver City Councillor — sadly,  was unable to recreate when VanRamblings’ Movable Type platform collapsed. Working for 48 non-stop hours, the supremely skilled Mr. Klassen was able to convert this blog he first created in late 2003 leading to its February 2004 début into a WordPress blog

Tomorrow and Thursday, I will begin writing about politics, likely employing the 3rd person — mixing in the 1st person where it seems necessary and appropriate — focusing on the eight well-funded candidates for Mayor of the City of Vancouver, providing a somewhat brutal analysis of their respective candidacies.

Take my word for it, you won’t want to miss tomorrow’s and Thursday’s columns.

Health Update: Raymond Goes Into VGH today for Prostate Surgery at VGH

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Fourteen months after being diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer — as is the case with former U.S. President Joe Biden — today I was admitted to the Vancouver General Hospital for a three and a half hour radical robotic prostatectomy, after doctors at VGH discovered — following an MRI, a bone scan and a biopsy (more than one actually — that, like Joe Biden I had a Gleason score of 9 …

For the past 9 months, I have been subjected to a number of biopsies and regular injections, and participated in the Gun Study — a multi-centre North American clinical trial headed up by the Vancouver General Hospital’s Dr. Martin Gleave, the head of the Prostate Clinic at VGH.

Early on, it  was determined that I must have my prostate removed employing the radical robotic prostatecomy procedure.

Over the past months, I have taken a variety of medications — Apalalutamide, Zytiga and Prednisone — which has effectively removed my sexuality and turned me into a eunuch, which is to say a male who has been chemically castrated, and with the removal of my prostate surgically castrated.

This morning after being transported to Vancouver General Hospital by my friend, Susan Walsh — spouse of my friend, the late Michael Walsh, who for 50 years was the lead film critic at The Province newspaper — who accompanied me to Admitting, after which I was escorted to a bed in a ward in the south tower of the Jim Pattison Pavilion, on floor T6.

As you read this, I will be in surgery, a three and a half hour major surgery where an extensive, complex procedure will see my abdomen “opened up”, which is to say, my surgery involves entering a major body cavity ( in this case the abdomen). My anaesthesiologist told me that, under his supervision, I will be given a general anesthesia that will require an at least initial 72-hour long recovery period, requiring an overnight stay tonight, or if complications arise, an extended hospital stay. In any event, my anesthesiologist told me that, “Raymond, you will be ‘stoned’ for at least 72 hours.” Fun times ahead, I guess.

I will be left with three incisions — a three and a half inch vertical incision at the bottom of the public bone, and two more somewhat lesser incisions, top right and top left. I was told I must not lift anything heavier than 10 pounds post surgery, less the incisions rupture, creating wound dehiscence, which occurs when a surgical incision reopens, where internal organs might protrude through the wound.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59ee0eecb10598d866c226de/1530884809264-3QUPXRQ5V372MQSDFE8K/Pubic-Bone-1.jpg?format=1500w

Should things to well with the surgery — which my family physician, Dr. Brad Fritz, Dr. Mannas, my surgeon (and other of his colleagues in the Prostate Clinic), and my anesthesiologist believes is most probable — I will be picked up from hospital at 10am on Saturday, by my friend the every beauteous, incredibly bright, politically astute, accomplished and loving Meaghan (and her incredibly great football (British football) loving husband Alasdair, and their two children, Fergus and Elliot, who are the most zen children I’ve ever met — needless to say, I love both children (a reciprocal affection, it would seem), as I do Alasdair and Meaghan.

Count me as one very lucky and grateful individual.

I will spend the weekend in bed at home, attended to by Susan, by my Co-op neighbours — again, count me as the luckiest man in the world that Jason, Heather, Laurie and Kevin, Tatiana, Judi, Jette, Alex, Alexandra and Jordan, and all of my other fellow Broadview Housing Co-op members are possessed of an uncommon humanity, and a dedication to building a better and more loving world.

Post surgery I will have a catheter inserted, for a period of one week — rather than the five plus weeks I had a very painful catheter inserted in March and April. Like ouch. Julia, the registered nurse who has given me regular injections over the past 9 months (“Pants down, Mr. Tomlin. Bend over now.”) will remove the catheter on Friday, November 7th. My friend, and personal health saviour, Kelly Ryan (we provide “co-parenting” of Teague) will travel with me to the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Centre for removal of the catheter, and then ferry me home.

Teague the dog, only the most loving dog in the world

There will be a one-year post surgery recovery period during which I will have to wear incontinence underwear. Friends of mine who have had prostate surgery tell me that the worst of the incontinence occurs during the first three or four months.

Now that I’m off the prostate medication, it is likely that my energy and vitality will return, affording me the opportunity to provide more intensive coverage of next year’s Vancouver municipal election.

My support for 46-year-young Vancouver Liberals Mayoral candidate Kareem Allam — Vancouver’s Zohran Mamdani (ssshhh, don’t tell anyone) remains strong, as I hope to write (extensively) in the months to come.

Kareem Allam Launches Campaign to Be Mayor of the City of Vancouver

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Video provided courtesy of Bob Mackin / The Breaker News.

The information below is excerpted from an article by Nathan Caddell — son of Ian, one of VanRamblings’ best friends dating back to 1970, through until Ian’s untimely passing in 2012 at 63 years of age, far, far too young for him to leave the planet — the article published in 2023 in BC Business.

Kareem Allam was born in Vancouver to immigrants from Cairo in 1979. He spent a few years back and forth between Canada and Egypt before his family permanently moved to Richmond. After high school, he studied history at Simon Fraser University, where he found himself thrown into the political fray as a young man.

In 2005, Kareem played a pivotal role in helping Dianne Watts get elected as Mayor of Surrey, a popular and populist Mayor, and perhaps Surrey’s best Mayor ever. After that mayoral election win in 2005, Kareem worked for a number of organizations, including Terasen Gas (now FortisBC), the Vancouver Board of Trade and Fraser Health.

In 2011, Kareem took on the task of serving as Kevin Falcon’s deputy campaign manager for a BC Liberal leadership campaign in which Falcon narrowly lost to Christy Clark. “That was a bit gutting,” he recalls, noting that it was his first big loss.

About 10 years later — after Allam had spent some more years working at the aforementioned organizations as well as some time in Indigenous relations, Falcon called again. Andrew Wilkinson had just stepped down as leader of the BC Liberals after the party was trounced by the BC NDP.

“I think the party really didn’t do as well with Andrew as the leader — there was definitely a lot of intellectual capacity there, Andrew is brilliant,” says Allam. “But that ability to sort of connect was lost, which people in the party took for granted. That was what Christy [Clark] was really good at — one-on-one, she’ll make you feel like the most important person in the world.”

There was also what Allam refers to as a policy drift within the party, and he was worried that the caucus didn’t look or act like the rest of the province.

“The discussions I had with Kevin went right up the start of the race,” he remembers. “I’m like, Okay, if you run, we’ll put together a good team, we’ll win. The question is what’s going to happen next. Are you prepared for that with your family and everything?”

So, very quickly, I reached out and built the most diverse team I had ever been part of.

We wanted to signal where the party wanted to go. If you watch his campaign videos, he’s walking across rainbow crosswalks, talking about how his values haven’t changed, but his perspective has.

“It was the remaking of the image. I think it appealed to the party — let’s become younger, more urban, more progressive. It resonated in the Chinese and South Asian communities, too.”

Many Vancouverites only first heard of Kareem Allam’s name in the aftermath of the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, but current City of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim had actually tried to recruit him for his first shot at the mayor’s chair in 2018.

“Ken asked me to run his campaign three times, I said no three times,” says Allam. “I was at a point in my career where I just wasn’t ready to take it on.” He also had his worries about the NPA: “The party had drifted to the right, and that’s just not where I or Vancouver voters were and will never be.”

In 2022, with three of the former NPA councillors joining Sim under a new party banner ABC, or A Better City — some of Sim’s closest friends, who had helped on the Falcon campaign, started calling Allam. “I was like, No guys, I’m really burnt out,” he says with what can only be described as a perpetually exhausted laugh.

Living downtown, the “sense of urban decay” encouraged Allam to eventually take on the job.

“Just starting to see people in mental health distress on the street,” says Allam. “A lot more needles, excrement, windows being shattered, all signs of a mental health crisis. Because of my time at Fraser Health, I recognized immediately what the solution was: Car 87, a mental health programme run by Coastal Health and the Vancouver Police Department that partners police officers with mental health nurses. These programmes work, there’s no doubt they work. So I went, Okay, I’m going to take this campaign on and this is what I’m going to bring to the city—100 cops, 100 mental health nurses.”

There were also key promises around housing permitting and child care.

“We played it dead centre in terms of ideology,” says Allam. “At least that’s what we tried to do. We acknowledged immediately that nine of the 11 Vancouver ridings are NDP ridings. If we didn’t get people who voted for John Horgan, no way were we going to win the election … We won almost the entire city, we won Oppenheimer Park, which nobody predicted.”

Asked whether there’s one thing that binds his campaigns together, Allam cites his status as a perceived outsider.

“This is a space that’s dominated by rich white people from the west side,” he says. “When I started in politics in the early 2000s, Arabs weren’t the most popular people. When some of the bigger campaigns were getting pulled together, they’d go, What are we going to do with Kareem, oh, you can manage the ethnics. I made the decision early on that, okay, I will do that. I built great relationships with the South Asian and Chinese communities… You want me to be in charge of the ethnics, okay great, now the ethnics are in charge of you.”

Vancouver Liberals Mayoral candidate Kareem Allam in his own words.