Tag Archives: kareem allam

Mayoral Candidate Kareem Allam’s Bid to Rebuild Vancouver’s Social Fabric

#VanElxn 2026, #VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Park Board, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2026, , , , , , , , , , , , ,


Kareem Allam, 47, Vancouver Liberals’ Mayoral candidate  | Photo credit: Katie Hyslop, The Tyee

For over two decades, Kareem Allam has been the man behind the curtain in Canadian politics.

Kareem is a self-described “policy nerd” and a master campaign strategist who has navigated the highest corridors of municipal, provincial, and federal power.

Yet, for all his time spent steering others to victory, in 2026 Kareem Allam has stepped out from the shadows of backroom strategy to mount his own campaign.

As the founder, leader, and Mayoral candidate for the newly formed municipal party, the Vancouver Liberals, Kareem Allam is running a well-funded, high-stakes campaign to unseat Mayor Ken Sim, in the October 2026 civic election.

Kareem Allam’s transition from kingmaker to candidate marks a massive shift in Vancouver’s civic landscape.

In 2022, Kareem Allam was the mastermind who successfully guided Ken Sim and the ABC Vancouver party to a historic sweep of City Hall, the Park Board, and the School Board. After steering ABC Vancouver to a sweeping majority at all three levels of civic government, he served briefly as Mayor Sim’s Chief of Staff before a highly publicized falling-out led to his departure in February 2023.

@jessforvancouverWe are still in a housing crisis – but we have a real solution to get Vancouver out of crisis mode. #vanpoli @vancouverliberals♬ original sound – jessforvancouver


Now, disillusioned by what he views as a broken social contract and a deeply divided city, Kareem Allam has built a political vehicle of his own.

With a platform focused on a massive infrastructure injection, an aggressive front line service plan, and a return to consensus-driven, big-tent governance, Kareem Allam aims to execute an activist civic agenda not seen since the 1970s.

Upbringing, Roots, and the Great Canadian Social Contract

To understand Kareem Allam’s political philosophy, one must look to his family history, which he frequently cites as the bedrock of his world view.

Born in Vancouver and raised in Richmond, Kareem is the son of an Egyptian colonel — who spent 11 months as an Israeli prisoner of war — and a Sudanese mother whose family was expropriated during a revolution. His mother spent two grueling years living in a refugee camp in Lebanon before arriving in Canada.

Though his father, Mahmoud Allam, would eventually return to Egypt to manage the Al Ahly football club, the family’s formative years in the Lower Mainland left an indelible mark on Kareem.

Speaking with reporter Katie Hyslop for an extensive feature profile in The Tyee, Kareem Allam reflected on how Vancouver served as a safe harbour where his family could heal, plant roots, and ultimately thrive:

“My family history defines a lot of how I perceive this place… [Vancouver] was a welcoming place, a place of refuge and a place where they were able to thrive, raise their children. It wasn’t always prosperous. But over the arc of time, the family has done well.”

This personal history forged Allam’s deep belief in what he terms the “great Canadian social contract” — the idea that a booming economy must directly fund world-class social programming, and that each generation bears a strict responsibility to build winning conditions for the next.

Kareem Allam’s formal education took him away from the West Coast for high school and graduate studies, including a stint in Ottawa where he cut his political teeth working on Parliament Hill for the federal Canadian Alliance party.

But the pull of Vancouver was permanent.

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

Outside of politics, his career spanned public, private, and non-profit sectors. He served as the Director of Public Policy for the Vancouver Board of Trade, sat on the Fraser Health Authority’s Board of Directors, worked with major energy corporations like TransCanada and FortisBC, and served on the TransLink screening panel and the College of Massage Therapists of B.C.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

Professionally, his primary focus for the last two decades has been as a partner at Richardson Strategy Group (formerly Richardson Strategies), working closely alongside prominent Indigenous leaders like Haida nation leader Miles Richardson on complex title, rights, and economic development negotiations.

The Campaign Veteran: 40 Races and the Road to Kingmaker

Before launching his own mayoral bid, Kareem Allam compiled a legendary résumé as a political strategist, managing or advising on roughly 40 political campaigns across the ideological spectrum.


Kareem specializes in taking complex policy ideas and distilling them into simple, powerful promises that resonate with everyday voters.

His track record as a backroom general is elite:

  • The 2005 Surrey Municipal Race: He helped guide Dianne Watts to an upset victory as Mayor of Surrey, reshaping the politics of BC’s fastest-growing city;
  • Federal Conservative Leadership (2020): Kareem Allam played a critical role in successfully securing the federal Conservative Party leadership for Erin O’Toole, navigating a complex, multi-ballot ranked voting system.;
  • Provincial BC Liberal Leadership (2022): He served as the campaign manager who secured the leadership of the provincial Liberal party (later renamed BC United) for Kevin Falcon;
  • ABC Vancouver Municipal Sweep (2022): In his most (in)famous local victory, Mr. Allam masterminded Ken Sim’s mayoral campaign. He engineered the easily digestible pledge to hire “100 police officers and 100 nurses,” a message that fundamentally shifted public safety discourse and handed ABC a total majority.

However, Kareem Allam’s political alignment experienced a dramatic shift.

In the 2024 British Columbia provincial election, the lifelong conservative strategist publicly broke ranks to endorse and re-organize and energize the BC NDP campaign — steering the party and their moribund campaign for re-election, from an almost certain defeat to majority status — stating to The Tyee’s Katie Hyslop that the modern center-right movement had abandoned its traditional values of climate action, reconciliation, and social cohesion, veering instead toward populism.

“I’m not sure that I left the center-right movement,” Kareem Allam observed. “I think the center-right movement left me.”

The Vancouver Liberals and the Fight for a Council Majority

The Vancouver Liberal Electors Association — commonly known as the Vancouver Liberals  — was officially founded on July 3, 2025. The Vancouver Liberals are a strictly municipal political party, entirely independent of both the federal Liberal Party of Canada and the former provincial B.C. Liberals.

Kareem Allam’s strategy for the 2026 election hinges on building a true coalition party that rejects extreme polarization. He has intentionally recruited high-profile candidates from across the political spectrum to build a team capable of seizing a majority on the 11-member Vancouver City Council.

Vancouver Liberals 2026 Civic Team (Key Figures)

├── Mayoral Candidate: Kareem Allam

City Council Candidates:

Dr. Moira Stilwell, a Vancouver Liberals Council candidate, one of VanRamblings two favourites in 2026

│ ├── Dr. Moira Stilwell (Physician; former B.C. provincial cabinet minister)
│ ├── Jessica Walton (Front line government worker, socialist, NDP stalwart)
│ ├── Michael Wu (30-year entrepreneur & former RCMP Auxiliary Constable)
│ ├── Devin Clemens (UBC Graduate Programs Manager, School of Economics)
│ └── Armor Valor (South Vancouver community advocate, front line worker)
│ ├── Victoria Jung (current Vancouver School Board Chair)

└── Park Board Candidates:

Shayla Bird, Vancouver Liberals candidate for Vancouver Park Board

├── Brennan Bastyovanszky (Sitting Park Board Commissioner)
├── Scott Jensen (Sitting Park Board Commissioner; first Indigenous Chair)
├── Mark Halyk (transformed Park Boards concession services for the better)
└── Shayla Bird (Educator, consultant, Black public Historian)

By bringing over sitting heavyweights like Victoria Jung, Scott Jensen, and Brennan Bastyovanszky — who actively opposed Ken Sim’s efforts to dismantle the democratically elected Park Board — Kareem Allam has positioned the Vancouver Liberals as protectors of civic democracy and neighbourhood infrastructure.

The Mayoral Platform: From Infrastructure to Pest Control

Kareem Allam’s platform represents a highly activist approach to municipal government. Rather than scaling back, Kareem proposes using the city’s financial levers to aggressively address long-ignored public deficits.

Service to the People of Vancouver: Rebuilding Civic Infrastructure

The centre-left anchor of Kareem Allam’s platform is a monumental $1.35 billion capital fund commitment aimed at thoroughly renovating 11 Vancouver community centres.

These facilities were explicitly flagged by City Auditor General Mike McDonnell as being in an advanced state of disrepair. Kareem Allam argues that by neglecting neighbourhood pools, libraries, and community hubs, the current administration is eroding the literal spaces where social cohesion is formed.

As part of this infrastructure push, Kareem Allam has rejected “half-measures,” pledging to build brand-new hockey rinks and aquatic facilities — headlined by a premium 50-meter Olympic-standard swimming pool designed to train future Canadian athletes, rather than standard 25-meter alternatives.

Ridding Vancouver of Rats That Are Infecting Every Neighbourhood

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

On the public works front, Kareem Allam has targeted a quality-of-life crisis that many politicians avoid: the city’s exploding rodent population.

With regional data frequently placing Vancouver among the most rat-infested cities in Canada, Kareem Allam has made a firm mayoral commitment to implement coordinated, science-based eradication strategies across all city neighborhoods, treating pest control as a core public health responsibility of City Hall.

Core Policy Positions: Decentralization, Compassion, and Anti-Laundering

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

Kareem Allam has carved out distinct, highly detailed policy positions on the most polarizing crises facing Vancouver today:

Homelessness and the Downtown Eastside (DTES)

Kareem Allam has been a vocal critic of the encampment clearances on East Hastings Street executed by the current administration.

In an interview with CBC, Kareem Allam publicly apologized for his own past role as Chief of Staff during the early stages of those policy discussions, noting that the final execution violated a fundamental commitment to not decamp vulnerable residents without providing adequate, permanent housing.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

Kareem Allam argues that forced decampments simply push the crisis into surrounding neighborhoods and sever the vital connections between unhoused individuals and healthcare workers. His strategy shifts away from displacement, focusing instead on collaborating with non-profits and utilizing surplus city land to build supportive housing networks.

Mr. Allam’s deep ties to the front lines are underscored by his volunteer work on the Board of the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) in the Downtown Eastside.

Countering Our City’s Food Security Crisis | Kareem’s Civic Food Strategy

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Kareem Allam (@kareemformayor)

To counter the food security crisis, Kareem Allam has proposed a municipal food strategy modeled directly after the UBC Food Hub.

Rather than using taxpayer funds to purchase commercial grocery stores, Kareem Allam’s plan involves donating unused city buildings and surplus municipal land to non-profit organizations to distribute low-cost, high-quality groceries directly into underserved communities.

Crypto, Bitcoin, and Money Laundering

Kareem Allam has positioned the Vancouver Liberals firmly against alternative financial systems that complicate public safety.

Labeling money laundering as the financial engine of international drug cartels operating out of luxury downtown penthouses, Kareem Allam’s platform includes an outright ban on Bitcoin ATMs across Vancouver.

His policy pledges to gradually eliminate unchecked private currency exchanges and actively replace predatory payday loan shops with trusted, community-focused institutions like Pigeon Park Savings.

Furthermore, Kareem Allam has explicitly mocked what he terms “ridiculous, tech-bro ideas” championed by political opponents, such as attempting to heat public swimming pools using commercial Bitcoin servers, arguing that public spaces must remain focused entirely on community utility.

Prose Poetry: A Fit for Activist Office | The Architect of Change

To look upon Kareem Allam is to see a man forged in the crucible of institutional statecraft, an operative whose life has been an extended masterclass in the levers, gears, and quiet pulleys of Canadian governance.

Kareem Allam does not approach City Hall as a starry-eyed idealist or a corporate outsider fluent only in the language of balance sheets; he arrives as an architect who knows exactly where the foundational pillars are buried.

His decades spent navigating the fierce currents of federal ministries, provincial cabinets, and complex Indigenous title negotiations have granted him a rare, battle-tested wisdom. He understands a city is not a business to be managed down to the lowest dividend, but a profound, living trust that must be fiercely protected.

Should Kareem Allam emerge as Mayor on the evening of October 17th, Vancouver will witness its most radical, activist executive since Art Phillips and the TEAM movement revolutionized local politics in the 1970s.

Like Art Phillips — who created the south False Creek neighbourhood of co-operative and social housing, watefront parks and pedestrian pathways; introduced neighbourhood planning and advisory committees, public consultation, and community involvement in major planning decisions; protected parks and public waterfronts; restructured municipal governance by making elected officials — not unelected administrators—the primary drivers of policy, Kareem Allam possesses the rare, panoramic vision required to build a grand coalition from a fractured electorate, drawing voices from the left, the right, and the forgotten centre into a unified civic project.

Kareem Allam is the only Mayoral candidate in the current Vancouver civic election, who recognizes that true strength lies not in top-down edicts or institutional closures, but in rebuilding the public squares — the community centres, the Olympic pools, the local libraries — where citizens of every race, age, and economic station cross paths and recognize their shared humanity.

Kareem Allam stands uniquely equipped to wield the power of City Hall as an instrument of profound social repair.

Kareem Allam is a leader who wakes up hungry for the complex, grinding work of structural reform, ready to deploy a billion-dollar capital fund with the precise, sweeping ambition of a true city-builder.

In an era defined by division and retreat, Kareem Allam’s Mayoral bid represents an audacious return to bold, interventionist municipal leadership — a promise to restore the fracturing social contract and ensure that Vancouver remains, above all else, a sanctuary where future generations can truly belong.

For the remainder of the summer through until Labour Day, VanRamblings will publish Mondays and Thursdays only — unless there is breaking news demanding our attention — and on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays on an occasional basis.

Enjoy your summer!

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

#VanElxn 2026, canadian politics, Politics, Vancouver Votes 2026, , ,


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.

Vancouver Liberals, Building a Civic Party Destined to Govern

#VanElxn 2026, #VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, canadian politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2026, , , , ,

Yesterday, VanRamblings received the following e-mail from our friend and neighbour Catherine Evans — founding member and soon-to-be Vice-President of the Vancouver Liberals, multi-year Chairperson of the Vancouver Public Library Board of Directors, dedicated Vancouver Park Board Commissioner, David Eby’s appointed liaison with Vancouver City Hall on Mayor Ken Sim’s proposal to dissolve an elected Vancouver Park Board (a hateful job she told VanRamblings, also telling us she’d lost a number of friends arising from her appointment by David, to whom she is loyal), and multi-year senior constituency assistant in federal Liberal Minister of the Crown Joyce Murray’s office (where she did much good for many many people) and now, as we say above, a founding member, and soon-to-be Vice-President of, Kareem Allam’s upstart Vancouver Liberals municipal party, as the party — VanRamblings predicts — rolls to victory at the polls next year.

Here’s what Catherine wrote to us — and many many others — yesterday …

This week we learned that Vancouver City Hall will pay out $800,000 in severance to the separated former City Manager, Paul Mochrie.

This is simply OUTRAGEOUS. An $800,000 payment on Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver’s watch is unacceptable.

We have to put an end to these golden parachutes at Vancouver City Hall.

Did Ken Sim and ABC make the decision to fire the city manager? We don’t know.

Did they approve this $800,000 payment to bring in a new city manager who will follow their directions? Again – unclear.

But one thing is for sure: this is $800,000 that is being taken away from front-line programmes like cleaning up our streets, cracking down on money laundering, and enhancing community centre programmes.

It’s not surprising Ken Sim didn’t bat an eye at an $800,000 severance payment. After all, he tried to fire the city Integrity Commissioner while he was under investigation.

This culture of entitlement at Vancouver City Hall must end.

When you elect a Vancouver Liberal council in 2026, you can be sure it will.

We need to fix City Hall — and that starts with defeating Ken Sim and his ABC Council, when voters go to the polls next year for Vancouver’s 42nd civic election.

Join the Vancouver Liberals team today.

Thank you,

Catherine Evans
Founding Member, Vancouver Liberals

Kareem Allam on the Vancouver Park Board, Preserve the Elected Board

#VanElxn 2026, BC Politics, Park Board, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2026, , ,

The Association Presidents Group (APG) representing 17 community centre associations across the City of Vancouver, released a statement in 2024 strongly urging Premier David Eby to “reconsider his commitment to proceeding with the elimination of the Vancouver Park Board.”

The APG says Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s decision is “undemocratic.”

“We do not believe 8 City Councillors can decide to abolish the Park Board elected by thousands of Vancouver citizens in October 2022,” it said, in the press release, which may be found below.

“We believe the Park Board can only be removed after a civic election in October 2026, and only if Vancouver citizens have made that choice. Neither the City nor the Province have a mandate to remove the Park Board.”

The Association Presidents Group (APG) says ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s motion to eliminate the Vancouver Park Board was announced and passed in a week without any engagement with the APG organization and other key stakeholders.

“There was no transition plan to demonstrate the alleged benefits of such a decision. The reasons announced have been questioned by many stakeholders including dozens of former Park Board Commissioners and Community Centre Associations,” said representatives with the Association Presidents Group.

Vancouver’s independent and elected Board of Parks and Recreation has served Vancouver for over 135 years. Vancouver is the only city in Canada with an elected Park Board and is the only city in North America other than Minneapolis to place its focus on growing a vibrant parks and recreation system as a constituent element to the citizens served by the municipal governments in both cities — up until the untoward December 13, 2023 decision by Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim and his super majority team of ABC Vancouver City Councillors.

VanRamblings reader Mara writes to correct some of the information above …

MANY cities in the United States have elected park boards including: Tacoma (Washington State), Bainbridge Island (Washington state), Bend (Oregon), Willamalane (Oregon), Simi Valley (California), Three Rivers Park District (Minnesota), and over 350 cities in Illinois (Naperville, Joliet, Rockford, Springfield are the big ones, but there are 350 others), and nearly every city in North Dakota (Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, Williston, others). There are also elected park districts in northern California, Montana, Colorado, Florida, West Virginia, New York state, and Massachusetts.

In Canada, Cultus Lake in British Columbia has an elected park board.

I say this because Vancouver IS NOT an outlier. It needs to keep its independently-elected park board, but people need to realize it’s one of many. If you keep repeating Ken Sim’s lie about Vancouver being an oddity, it feeds into his narrative.”

Thank you, Mara. At the moment, for some, the Contact VanRamblings function on the site is not working. We are working on resolving that issue.

Preservation of an Elected, Independent, Responsive Vancouver Park Board 

Here’s the Association Presidents Group Press Release 

The Association Presidents Group (APG) believes Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s attempt to abolish the elected Vancouver Park Board is undemocratic.

We do not believe 8 City Councillors can decide to abolish the Park Board elected by thousands of Vancouver citizens in October 2022. We believe the Park Board can only be removed after a civic election in October 2026, and only if Vancouver citizens have made that choice.

Neither the City nor the Province have a mandate to remove the Park Board.

Mayor Sim’s motion was announced and then passed within one week without any engagement with the Community Centre Associations and other key stakeholders. There was no transition plan to demonstrate the alleged benefits of such a decision. The reasons announced have been questioned by many stakeholders, including dozens of former Park Board Commissioners and Community Centre Associations.

The elected Park Board has served Vancouver well for over 135 years.

Voters created an elected Park Board because they wanted parks and recreation to be a high-profile priority in Vancouver. Commissioners run for office because they are passionate about protecting and expanding our parks and recreation programmes. It is their priority concern and responsibility.

The Mayor’s proposal would have Commissioners replaced by City Councillors who have a multitude of responsibilities resulting in a less responsive and effective working relationship for community stakeholders. City parks and recreation will not be the first priority for City Councillors.

The APG rejects the Mayor’s claim that the Park Board is broken.

We believe it has been critically underfunded by City Council for several decades.

Many of the examples cited by the Mayor for the elimination of the Park Board are in fact already the City of Vancouver’s responsibility. They own and maintain the buildings and infrastructure in the Park Board system.

For example, Park Board frequently recommends renewal and expansion of Community Centres for additional space to accommodate children’s programmes but it is City Councillors who decide on the funding. Parents complain that programme spaces for their children are inadequate. Those concerns should be directed to City Hall.

A decision to eliminate the elected Park Board must be determined democratically in the next municipal election if it remains part of the ABC platform. Let the voters of Vancouver make such an important decision.

Sign the APG Petition asking the Premier not to eliminate Park Board.

For more information please contact either of the following APG members:

(copy and paste either or both of the following e-mail addresses into your e-mail programme)

Jerry Fast <jerryfast@shaw.ca>

Kathleen Bigsby <kmbigsby@gmail.com>

The Auditor General’s Report released yesterday on his audit of recreation facility asset management at the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation (Park Board) and City of Vancouver (City).

The Report, as submitted by Mike Macdonell, Auditor General reads in part …

“The Park Board manages 24 community centres, 14 pools and eight indoor rinks, which are owned by the City, with responsibility for maintenance shared between the Park Board and City departments. The audit determined that these facilities were not effectively managed to align with strategic goals, meet service level priorities and optimize asset lifecycles.

The 46 recreation facilities included in the audit have an estimated infrastructure funding deficit of $33 million per year, which is part of the City’s significant overall infrastructure deficit of $500 million per year.

Many of the Park Board facilities’ building systems have been extended well beyond their intended useful life. As of 2022, the City’s data showed that 72% of recreation facilities were in poor or very poor condition, from an asset management perspective, based on the cost of required repairs and maintenance relative to the facility’s replacement value. Although the lower rating does not mean that facilities are unsafe, these assets generally cost more to maintain, repair or improve and are closer to requiring renewal.

The Park Board and the City aimed to improve the condition of recreation facilities so that 70-80% were in good or fair condition by 2050. However, there were no agreed-upon facility asset management investment plans to fund such a significant increase in condition.

The audit found that the City did not have a Council-approved policy or strategy, or a formalized capital asset management framework, to guide asset management planning for recreation facilities and ensure consistent alignment between community expectations, service delivery targets, and the maintenance strategies needed to support them.

The City provided building maintenance services to the Park Board guided by an agreement created in 2014, but the audit found there was no operating level agreement that defined respective Park Board and City staff responsibilities.

The agreement also did not define accountability or reporting requirements from the City to the Park Board for its provision of asset management services. The audit found that Park Board Commissioners did not receive consolidated information on asset-related service levels, performance indicators and funding scenarios to support their responsibility to oversee recreation asset management.”

VanRamblings believes that preserving our elected Park Board is critical for the livability of our city, to continue to prioritize the high quality of service provided to us by our community centres, pools and hockey rinks, and the maintenance of Vancouver’s more than 400 parks for the ongoing enjoyment of Vancouver citizens.