Tag Archives: sean orr

#VanPoli | COPE Candidate for Mayor, Stephanie Allen, Withdraws from Race to Become City’s Next Mayor

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Full text of COPE’s candidate for Mayor Stephanie Allen’s speech to a press conference delivered Sept. 2nd in Helen Gutteridge Plaza at Vancouver City Hall.

Good morning,

I offer my acknowledgement of the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, to their peoples who have stewarded these lands for 1000s of years. I offer my commitment to working in good relations towards our collective liberation from colonial systems.

Today, I am here together with my colleagues and loved ones to announce that, for the good of all people living in Vancouver, we have decided as a team to withdraw my candidacy for Mayor of Vancouver.

In May, our membership nominated me as part of a slate to win the City — to evict Ken Sim and ABC and achieve a COPE-led democratic socialist municipal government.

For now, we have not been able to achieve all of our goals.

But this movement isn’t about me or about COPE.

It’s about the people of Vancouver.

And the people need us to defeat this right-wing government and reduce the harm being done by the sociopathic system we’re up against.

So while I am announcing the end of my campaign for Mayor, I am also here today to recommit to our common fight for Vancouver.

Ken Sim and ABC must be evicted on October 17th.

That’s why I am strongly encouraging the other mMayoral candidates in the race to also do the right thing, show integrity, and narrow the Mayoral field to the person best positioned to evict Ken Sim.

Earlier this year, COPE and progressive parties struck an agreement to limit candidates and create a path towards a single Mayor. We have come to the moment where we at COPE have made our decision.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to stand as the Mayoral candidate for COPE, a party with the deepest history of fighting the power of the super rich and showing up for the poor and working class people in our city.

COPE is a party dedicated to telling the truth. We are a diverse cohort of shared purpose. We have the lived experience, academic accomplishments, systemic analysis, and practical knowledge to examine the problems facing our city at the root cause level and to craft policies that will create lasting solutions.

But just as importantly, we at COPE have the love to care about the struggles that families, seniors, youth, working people and ALL those who have been pushed to the margins are going through, and we can see how much worse it’s getting for everyone.

We will not put our egos ahead of doing the right thing for Vancouver.

We know that it is mission critical to have one Mayor on the progressive side and that it has to be the person best positioned at this critical hour, to win the election.

We need a majority progressive Council, School Board, and Park Board to undo the damage done by this bad Mayor and the bad Mayors that came before him.

By stepping aside, we are showing to the people of Vancouver that we have heard you, that we will put you first, and that our commitment is to the long haul. Our movement will keep going, we will never give up the fight for a free and just society grounded in principles of care and community over greed and inequality.

Vancouver, we are here to do the right thing for you and we will keep doing the right thing. Getting a progressive majority on Council will have a direct positive material impact on the lives of people in our city.

And while we do that vital harm reduction through our existing electoral systems, we will stay relentless in dreaming up replacement systems. Ones that are restorative of people and planet, not extractive and exploitative. Ones that value life over profit, care over consumption, and healing over abuse and punishment.

The super-rich are planning our extinction. It’s obvious now. They don’t care about us, about the future generations to come, the climate, wildlife and natural habitat. All they see are ways to squeeze humanity and nature for the sake of piling more billions into their vaults.

You take care of your neighbours. It’s been an honour to speak to so many people over these last months who understand the threat facing our city, and our world. You have shared with me your stories, your frustrations, and your dreams of better.

Local shopkeepers, non-profit leaders, co-op housing members, people working in the gig economy, those who have and are being displaced from homes they love, advocates and organizers.

YOU are the ones with the solutions.

You have done the work to get food to the households that need it, help people recover from addictions and get the therapeutic support they need.

You are the ones who put in all the work to develop affordable homes, protect women and children fleeing violence, and care for seniors on low incomes. You make sure kids are protected from the cruelty in our society.

You also make this city cool with your dedication to the arts and culture scene in this city, with comedy festivals, activating parks and event venues with live music, theatre, and visual arts productions.

It is we, the people, who have the power. We always have, and we always will. Promise me, you’ll never lose sight of that.

So, as I leave the Mayoral race I want to say:

To Vancouver, you are worth fighting for … and this building, City Hall, is your house. Do not vote for anyone who would disrespect you or take you for granted in your house. Send ABC a message that their politics of division and selling out to the super rich are done.

To my fellow candidates, and the COPE staff, volunteers, and membership, thank you for the trust you put in me to carry our message to the city.

For your dedication to a better world, and for showing up everyday challenging yourselves and all of us to dream of a better future for our city. Despite all the things, I have never served alongside a better group of people anywhere. We’re in this now, I’m not going anywhere, we still got this ‘cuz we got each other.

To my friends and supporters, my family, my husband …  thank you for being there with your calls, texts, donations, hugs, so many hugs …and showing up when I didn’t expect you but absolutely needed you. Doing this work was only possible because of your love and care.

To our ancestors, all those who came before us and fought for us to have the freedoms we have now, freedoms you never saw, thank you for what you sacrificed and for dreaming of a better world for us.

To the future generations, we won’t let you down. We will stop climate change, eliminate poverty and homelessness, and make love and compassion the foundation of the structures that govern our lives.

In solidarity, and dedication to an affordable and just city and for a better world, I offer my sincere appreciation and love.

Ken Sim’s $550,000 Question: Is Vancouver’s Public-Safety Plebiscite Really About Governing?

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There are few issues more important to Vancouver than public safety, open-air drug use and the city’s increasingly desperate struggle to respond to addiction and severe mental illness.

That is precisely why Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority on City Council should be held to a higher standard than the one they have set for themselves in putting two non-binding plebiscite questions on the October 17 municipal election ballot.

The questions concern matters on which every Vancouverite has an opinion.

Plebiscite Questions

  • Open-Air Drug Use: Asks voters if they support the city strengthening its laws and bylaws to forbid open-air hard drug use (such as fentanyl, crack, meth, and heroin) in public spaces.
  • Involuntary Care Beds: Asks voters if Vancouver should formally request that the provincial government provide over 100 voluntary and involuntary mental health and addiction treatment beds within the city, specifically referencing the St. Paul’s Hospital site

The first asks whether voters support strengthening the city’s laws and bylaws to forbid open-air use of hard drugs — including fentanyl, crack, methamphetamine and heroin — in public spaces.

The second asks whether Vancouver should formally request that the provincial government establish a secure medical facility with more than 100 voluntary and involuntary mental-health and addiction treatment beds, potentially at portions of the former St. Paul’s Hospital site.

The questions passed during the emergency Council meeting held this past Thursday, August 13th, occurred amidst heated opposition.

Councillors Pete Fry (the Greens) and Sean Orr (COPE) walked out of the impromptu Council meeting in protest, while Lucy Maloney (OneCity Vancouver) remained in chambers and voted no.

Why, after nearly four years in office, does Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority need a $400,000-to-$550,000 election-day plebiscite, roughly 4% to 6% the municipal election budget?

That is the question voters should be asking.

What Vancouver’s 2026 Mayoral Candidates Have to Say

The Mayoral candidates have exposed the political calculation differently.

Kareem Allam, the Vancouver Liberals candidate and Sim’s former chief of staff, has been particularly blunt. Allam argues that residents do not need another survey; they need a city government that actually acts. His central criticism is that Sim is spending public money asking permission to do things City Council can already pursue and that the Mayor can already raise directly with Premier David Eby.

Kareem Allam rejected Ken Sim’s public-safety plebiscite outright, calling it political theatre rather than a solution to Vancouver’s public safety issues.

Allam’s argument: Vancouverites do not need another survey about public safety.

“The people of Vancouver need a municipal government that actually delivers results. Ken Sim has had four years to address public safety and rather than conditions improving they have deteriorated.”

Allam also sees the plebiscite as a distraction from ABC’s record, describing Sim’s 2026 campaign as effectively “campaigning against his 2022 campaign.” Allam also questioned the wisdom of holding a referendum on matters that extend beyond the city’s jurisdiction and mandate, his most pointed criticism that …

“The Mayor’s job is about governing not campaigning: if Sim believes open-air drug use must be prohibited and Vancouver needs substantially more treatment capacity, the Mayor should use the powers and political relationships he already possesses rather than spend hundreds of thousands of dollars asking voters a non-binding question.”

Allam: “Residents don’t need another survey. They need a city that works.”

That is a devastating criticism precisely because it comes from someone who knows how Sim’s administration operates.

In a statement released following the plebiscite vote, COPE Mayoral candidate Stephanie Allen suggested there is public drug use …

“Because predators are being given free rein to kick people out of their homes for money for profit, abuse children, or sell poison drugs. If we want real public safety in Vancouver, we need to crack down on predators in our communities, both in the mansions and in the streets.”

Allen was sharply critical of Mayor Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver’s decision to spend as much as $550,000 putting two non-binding public-safety questions on the October 17 municipal-election ballot, characterizing it as an “expensive re-election gimmick” designed to “scapegoat the vulnerable” and distract Vancouverites from the record of the Sim administration.

Allen went on to say that …

“Ken Sim has had four years — and an overwhelming Council majority — to act on public safety, mental-health and addiction issues,” she told The Tyee. “Governments should address poverty and the mental-health and addictions crisis directly, while also drawing attention to less visible forms of violence, including gender-based violence,” describing public safety as a political “football” that can obscure the deeper social problems producing street disorder.

Allen isn’t arguing that Vancouver should simply tolerate open-air drug use.

Rather, she is challenging ABC’s method and motives.

Allen’s position is essentially: if ABC believes these measures are necessary, why hasn’t it acted during the four years it has controlled City Hall?

Pete Fry, the Green Party candidate and one of the Councillors who walked out of the emergency meeting in protest, has likewise challenged ABC’s approach to public safety. Fry’s broader position is that Vancouver’s problems require municipal leadership that combines enforcement with housing, mental-health and social services rather than reducing public safety to policing alone.

Fry’s objection is not to safer streets; it is to the false choice ABC presents between public safety and more comprehensive solutions.

Colleen Hardwick, a Mayoral candidate for TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, strongly opposes Mayor Ken Sim’s proposed public safety plebiscite, dismissing it as a costly political stunt and an expensive re-election gimmick.

Key Stances from Colleen Hardwick

  • Waste of Public Funds: Hardwick criticized the plebiscite — which is estimated to cost about half a million dollars — as an unnecessary distraction.
  • Ineffective Leadership: She stated that Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority had four years to address the addictions and public safety crisis but failed to deliver meaningful solutions.
  • Recovery-Oriented Approach: Instead of short-term political theatre regarding open-air drug use, Hardwick advocates for serious, lasting solutions focused on recovery and livability.
  • Council Authority: Echoing broader criticisms following the approval of the Vancouver public safety plebiscite, opponents note that the city already has the authority to adjust bylaws and address these issues without spending public money on a non-binding ballot question.

Colleen Hardwick, running again for TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, brings a different critique. Hardwick has repeatedly argued that municipalities must concentrate on their actual jurisdiction and that politicians should resist simplistic answers to complicated problems. As she has observed in discussing the Downtown Eastside and public safety, politicians can exploit fear and anger because frightened voters turn out. Her warning is especially relevant here: complex problems cannot be solved by slogans.

Rebecca Bligh, running for Mayor with Vote Vancouver after being expelled from the ABC caucus, has emphasized that public safety must extend beyond a purely reactive police response. She argues for embedded health services, supportive housing and less bureaucratic access to addiction and mental-health care. Her position is particularly significant because she once sat inside Sim’s governing coalition and now offers an alternative to its approach.

“If Ken Sim wanted to do something about improving public safety, he could have done so as Mayor, Police Chair, and head of a majority Council. Instead, Vancouver has suffered a failure of leadership. Ken Sim has joined successive mayors and councils in doing too little for too long.

In case Ken Sim doesn’t know: strengthening the City’s laws is literally the Mayor’s job. A plebiscite to ‘strengthen the City of Vancouver’s laws’ to tackle open air drug use is pure political theatre – he’s making grand claims that he can’t execute and playing politics with people’s lives as a stunt.”

And William Azaroff, the OneCity Vancouver Mayoral candidate, has positioned himself as part of a broader progressive challenge to Sim, emphasizing housing, community and social supports rather than the punitive politics that ABC has increasingly embraced.

OneCity’s approach rejects the notion that public safety can be separated from homelessness, poverty, housing and access to treatment.

None of these candidates is proposing that Vancouver simply tolerate dangerous public behaviour.

That is the straw man ABC needs voters to believe.

The City of Vancouver Deserves Governing, Not Campaigning

There is a legitimate public-safety crisis in Vancouver. Pretending otherwise would be irresponsible.

But exploiting that crisis politically is equally irresponsible.

If Ken Sim believes public drug use should be prohibited, he should tell Vancouverites exactly how he intends to do it.

If he believes Vancouver needs 100-plus involuntary treatment beds, he should sit down with the premier and negotiate the agreement.

If he believes the old St. Paul’s site is appropriate, he should explain how a property already sold for redevelopment would be made available.

And if he believes these matters are urgent, he should have been doing all of this during the past four years — not two months before an election.

The $550,000 plebiscite is not the solution to Vancouver’s public-safety crisis.

It is a symptom of a government that has discovered, very late in its mandate, that asking voters whether they want something is considerably easier than actually delivering it.

Vancouverites deserve safer streets. They deserve treatment beds. They deserve a serious response to addiction and mental illness.

Most of all, they deserve a government capable of governing.

A Question Without A Policy: Ken Sim Doesn’t Know What He’s Doing

The first question asked in the plebiscite is perhaps the most revealing.

Voters are being asked whether they want Vancouver to “strengthen its laws” to prohibit public consumption of hard drugs.

But which laws?

When asked what specific bylaws ABC intends to change, Sim reportedly could not provide an answer. His response was essentially that the city would look at the laws after the plebiscite.

That turns democratic consultation upside down.

Normally, government proposes a policy, explains what it will do, tells citizens what it will cost and then asks elected representatives — or voters — to approve it.

Here, ABC is asking voters to approve a concept without telling them precisely what the concept means.

Worse, open-air drug consumption is not simply a municipal-policy vacuum waiting for Ken Sim to fill. Criminal law, prosecution, health care and much of the regulation of controlled substances lie with the federal and provincial governments. The province’s three-year decriminalization experiment has already ended, and small-quantity possession is once again illegal.

If the Mayor believes Vancouver needs stronger municipal enforcement against public drug use, he has had four years to bring forward a concrete bylaw.

For four years Mayor Ken Sim has enjoyed a bullet-proof Council majority.

As a Mayor with a Council majority, Sim has the authority to propose legislation.

What exactly has prevented him from acting?

On October 17th, voters will have the opportunity to decide whether Ken Sim and his team of  ABC Vancouver City Councillors have done their job.

Two non-binding questions costing half a million dollars should not be allowed to substitute for the answer.

#VanPoli | COPE Announces a People’s Audit of Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver Civic Party

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This week COPE, The Coalition of Progressive Electors, and COPE’s Mayoral candidate, Stephanie Allen, announced The People’s Audit, COPE’s plan to open the books at Ken Sim’s City Hall, hold him accountable, clean up his mess, and deliver better public services for people.

We know a lot about what Ken Sim has done in power.

He turned a meeting room into a private gym, he tried to invest the city’s money in bitcoin, and he defunded affordable housing to the tune of $3.8 million that he gave away to for-profit developers.

Mayor Ken Sim gives the media a tour of his office space including his controversial personal gym at City Hall on June 26, 2024. Photo by Arlen Redekop /PNG

But there’s also a lot we don’t know yet.

Many decisions were made in secret, his 2026 austerity budget had almost no detail, hiding cuts to departments, staff, and programming.

We need to expose what has happened to our city, hear from everyone we can, and chart a path forward to clean up the mess.

We can open the books on Ken Sim’s City Hall.

We can expose the decisions made against the public interest, and who they serve.

Then we can transform the city to create public services that work, cut waste, and focus on making the city more affordable for people.

This is the work I’ve done professionally for the last several years. Working with organizations to guide transformation, creating alignment between promises made to the community and the day-to-day work. Creating a culture of integrity no matter the organization’s mission.

The steps are straightforward.

First, we listen to everyone, and review all the documentation. This allows us to find any bureaucratic absurdities, identify where rules are being followed — or broken — and address places where the system is not working.

Then, together with the team, partners, and community, we create a plan to clean it up, strengthen delivery, and build for the future from a solid foundation.

Then, we can turn the page on Ken Sim’s failed leadership.

I’m running for Mayor with COPE because we can take democracy back from the billionaires, make it affordable to build a life here, and make our city work for the people.

The People’s Audit Will:

  • Immediately Reverse Course on Ken Sim’s Disastrous Term and Restore the Renters Office, Reverse Cuts to Climate Programmes, and Increase the Empty Homes Tax;
  • Open the books on decisions made against the public interest, and put in new safeguards against lobbying and corporate influence;
  • Improve transparency and expose the problems at the city by talking with current and past city workers, city partners, and the public to improve service delivery and cut waste;
  • Review City AI data use policies, and investigate whether private city information was fed to American tech companies through LLMs;
  • Empower the Integrity Commissioner to hold politicians accountable, and update the city code of conduct to prioritize breaches of public trust.

We got this.

Stephanie Allen
COPE Candidate for Mayor of the City of Vancouver