To nobody’s surprise.
vancouversun.com
Vancouver Election Results: Big change at city hall, as Pete Fry unseats Ken Sim, becomes Vancouver's first Green mayor
ABC Vancouver, which swept to power in 2022 as a new centre-right party, was almost wiped out. Find out more.
vancouversun.com
Pete Fry is Vancouver’s guy.
At the Green party of Vancouver’s election-night party on Saturday night, the jubilant crowd chanted to celebrate their candidate’s win in the mayor’s race: “Our guy, Pete Fry! Our guy, Pete Fry!”
Fry, a two-term Vancouver councillor, unseated the incumbent mayor, Ken Sim of ABC Vancouver, in an election that saw the city government swing to the left.
Fry will become Vancouver’s first Green mayor, and he will be joined in a new-look civic administration with other Greens, as well as representatives of the city’s other major left-leaning parties, COPE and OneCity.
ABC Vancouver, which swept to power in 2022 as a new centre-right party, was almost wiped out. After ABC won the mayor’s office by a wide margin four years ago with its 18 affiliated candidates topping the polls for council, school board, and park board, the once-dominant party was reduced this year to a single seat.
With all voting places reporting, Fry has 98,494 votes, well ahead of Sim’s 67,467.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m., Fry took the stage at the Greens’ event, and told the crowd Sim had just phoned him to concede. Fry said the outgoing mayor was “very gracious in offering his assistance in making sure that I steward the city well.”
Colleen Hardwick of TEAM for a Livable Vancouver was in a distant third in the mayoral race, followed by the Vancouver Liberals’ Kareem Allam, and Vote Vancouver’s Rebecca Bligh. None of those three parties’ candidates were elected to council, park board, or school board.
Fry will oversee a diverse, more left-leaning council, with four different parties and no majority. He said he looks forward to working with councillors from across the spectrum, including ABC.
While ABC won seven of 10 council seats in 2022, incumbent Coun. Mike Klassen was the only one of the party’s nine council candidates elected this year.
Incumbent COPE Coun. Sean Orr won more votes than any other council candidate and will be joined by fellow COPE councillors Chloe Leslie, Devyani Singh, and Solomon Yi-Kieran. Four Green council candidates were elected: Annette Reilly, Stephanie Smith, Camil Dumont, and Bridget Burns. Incumbent OneCity Coun. Lucy Maloney was the only member of her party’s five candidates elected to council.
Fry said Vancouverites should not worry about the new council’s ability to get things done, despite having no majority.
“I’ve spent eight years on the Union of B.C. Municipalities, where the majority of mayors and councils don’t have political parties, and they function just fine. We have this anomaly in Vancouver with political parties … and I recognize that that’s a function of our electoral politics. But we can leave that at the door and focus on how we work together,” Fry said.
“My interest is in cultivating a culture where we’re all working for Vancouver, not for our political parties.”
Fry said ABC “really tried to run on very negative and fear-based messaging, and a lot of attack ads that we didn’t really respond to. Instead, we took a very positive, upbeat approach, and a love for our city that, I think, shone through.”
ABC failed to elect a single candidate to the park board or school board, which will be filled with a mix of COPE, OneCity, and Green politicians.
One of the biggest stories of Sim’s term in office was his attempt to abolish Vancouver’s elected park board, a unique body among B.C. cities. The move surprised the public and some members of Sim’s own party, but he eventually changed course and ABC ran a slate of park board candidates this year.
Ken Sim the evening of the municipal election night at Sheraton Wall Centre in Vancouver. PHOTO BY ARLEN REDEKOP /PNG
Incumbent Green park commissioner Tom Digby topped the park board race, and will be joined by fellow Greens Spencer van Vloten and Breanne Smart, as well as COPE candidates T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, Tamiko Suzuki, Jamie Han and Sacia Burton.
Watching the results roll in Saturday night, Digby commented: “Ken Sim tried to abolish the park board, but it turns out tonight might be the revenge of the park board, because I think we’re going to succeed in abolishing Ken Sim.”
Recent polling suggested a desire for change at Vancouver city hall. But with seven established parties running slates of council candidates and five mayoral hopefuls between them, there were several possibilities for what change could look like.
Sim and ABC dominated the 2022 election, with the new party’s entire slate of candidates topping the polls. But over the course of the four-year term, the size of that ABC caucus shrank with a series of politicians leaving the party, many of whom ran against their former party this year.
A record number of Vancouverites cast their votes before election day. More than 103,000 voters cast a ballot over four advance voting days this year, the city reported, a 59 per cent increase over 2022, and more than 21,000 voters requested vote-by-mail packages this year, more than double the last election.
In Vancouver’s 2022 election, a total of 171,494 ballots were cast, equating to 36.3 per cent of registered voters. In unofficial results, this election saw 209,214 ballots cast, a jump to over 43 per cent of voters.
The Vancouver ballot also featured two non-binding plebiscite questions this year, which were added by the ABC-majority council. The first question was about cracking down on public drug use, and another about converting part of the old St. Paul’s Hospital, or a similar site, into an “involuntary-care” facility for 100 or more people with severe mental-health and substance-use problems.
The plebiscite results were not released Saturday night, but are expected to be released by Wednesday.
The Greens, COPE and OneCity, as the city’s main left-leaning parties, entered into an agreement earlier this year to limit the number of candidates among them so as to not split the progressive vote. In early September, COPE and OneCity’s mayoral candidates withdrew from the race, paving the way for Fry as a unity candidate.
At the ABC Vancouver party in the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Sim addressed the crowd after he conceded defeat.
“Obviously tonight, voters wanted to go in a different direction — not just in the mayor’s office but with council, park and school board as well,” a subdued Sim told supporters. “I think it’s important we acknowledge that.”
Sim said he entered political life so he could create a better city for his children. But he acknowledged that the job meant he wasn’t always there for his kids.
“For that, boys, I totally apologize. I love you. You’re going to see a lot more of dad over the next little while.”
Sim described being elected to the mayor’s office as “the highlight of my life.”
“When I’m on my death bed, I’ll look back at this time as probably the most meaningful thing I’ve been involved with. And with that, thank you again, and we’ll see you out on the streets somewhere, I’m sure.”
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