It is that time again.
Vancouverites sifting through a ballot of more than 100 names with 15 people running for mayor, 59 for city council on top of the candidates for school board and park board commissioner.
On the top of the ballot, incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart is running again. Unlike four years ago he is now running with a slate of city council candidates under the Forward Together banner.
Among the 14 people challenging Stewart for the city’s top job is Ken Sim. Four years ago Sim finished second in the Vancouver mayoral race, losing to the mayor by 957 votes.
Sim is running with a council slate under the ABC Vancouver banner after having run under the NPA banner last time around.
With so much at stake and so many people running, working through the ballot could seem daunting.
That is why we are here.
Most Vancouverites have just tuned into the campaign or might still be figuring out how they want to cast their ballots.
If you find yourself in that boat – whether you don’t have time to comb through all of the promises or are struggling to cut through the noise – don’t panic. Global News has prepared a straightforward breakdown of who the candidates are and where they stand on some big policy issues.
Getting ready to vote
Here is what you need to know to vote. You must be 18 years old or older by Oct. 15 and a Canadian citizen, have lived in B.C. for at least six months prior to the election and in Vancouver or owned property registered in your name in Vancouver for at least 30 days immediately before registering to vote and not be disqualified by law from voting.
If you are registered to vote you will already have your voter card. Bring your card with you when you vote to speed up the voting process.
If you are not registered you will need to provide two identification documents to prove who you are and where you live. Electronic copies are not accepted. Check online for a full list of documents that work.
As to where you can vote, there are more than 100 polling stations in the city. Voters can cast a ballot at any of the polling stations on Saturday.
Meet the mayoral candidates
There are 15 people running for mayor. Although polls for municipal elections have been historically unreliable there have been a handful of candidates who have emerged as the front-runners.
Kennedy Stewart
The incumbent mayor is hoping to earn another four years on the job.
Much of Stewart’s first term has been defined by a bickering council trying to manage the city’s affairs in the midst of a global pandemic.
Unlike four years ago when he ran as an independent, Stewart is running under the Forward Together banner.
Current BC NDP leadership hopeful David Eby and federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh have endorsed him for mayor.
“I have a lot more work to do. We have accomplished a lot despite COVID and a fractured council,” Stewart said.
“We have done a lot on housing. But with alignment with the provincial and federal governments, we can do a lot more. I am dying to get back at it.”
Stewart served as the MP for Burnaby South before turning his focus on municipal politics.
One of the things that shaped Stewart was his childhood as his family went bankrupt and they struggled with housing security.
The incumbent lists housing access and affordability as his priority election issue.
Ken Sim
Four years ago Ken Sim burst onto the political scene with a contentious victory in the NPA nomination only to finish second in his attempt to become mayor.
Sim is back, once again looking to become the mayor, but running under the ABC Vancouver banner.
The father of four boys made his name as a business person as the founder of Nurse Next Door and Rosemary Rocksalt bagels.
“I am a concerned citizen of Vancouver and I believe we can do a lot to improve the city,” Sim said.
“We want to make Vancouver a more affordable, livable and safer city for all of us.”
The entrepreneur would be the first Vancouver mayor of Chinese descent.
Sim has focused on public safety as the primary issue in the campaign, along with housing affordability.
Mark Marissen
Mark Marissen has spent a career attempting to get other people elected. Now he is putting his effort into winning himself.
Marissen is not new to politics, having worked for various federal and provincial Liberal candidates, but is running for elected office for the first time.
He is running under the Progress Vancouver banner with a team of council candidates.
Throughout the campaign, Marissen has picked up endorsements from well-known politicians including former prime minister Paul Martin and his ex-wife former premier Christy Clark.
The focus of the campaign for Marissen has been housing especially targeting young families near schools and transit hubs.
“I would like to re-establish Vancouver as the cultural, social and economic centre of the Lower Mainland and of British Columbia,” Marissen said.
“It isn’t anymore. One of the reasons why it isn’t is other cities around us are welcoming people and Vancouver is not.”
One of Marissen’s key housing commitments is promising to allow six-storey rentals and four-storey condos across the entire city.
Colleen Hardwick
Colleen Hardwick has been a thorn in the side of Vancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart.
Now she wants to replace him.
The only sitting city councillor to be running for mayor, if elected, Hardwick would become Vancouver’s first female mayor.
Running under the TEAM banner, Hardwick is running on an agenda built of overhauling the housing policies and transit policies pushed by the current mayor.
Under Hardwick’s leadership, there would be pressure for the city to reverse the course of the approved Broadway Plan and change a proposed SkyTrain link to UBC to light rail.
“I don’t want to be the last generation of my family that can afford to live in Vancouver,” Hardwick said.
“I have got two kids in their 30s, and I have gained two grandchildren, frankly no one sees a future where they can live here. My kids are looking to move to Nanaimo.”
Hardwick said the city has enough zoning capacity already and does not need to upzone in areas currently with lower zoning rules.
She is also promising a plebiscite to ask Vancouverites whether they support a bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics.
TEAM gets its name from the 1970s political powerhouse when Hardwick’s father Walter served as a city councillor under the party banner.
Fred Harding
Fred Harding has been a central piece in a game of political musical chairs.
Four years ago Harding ran under the Vancouver 1st banner, capturing 5,640 votes, finishing sixth and around 45,000 votes behind Sim and Stewart.
This time Harding is running under the NPA banner, a late addition after John Coupar stepped away from the opportunity.
Harding, a former West Vancouver police officer, has used public safety as the central pillar of the campaign.
“This is about leadership. I was asked to come in because the NPA believed I was the person to defeat Kennedy at the ballot box,” Harding said.
“I know I can do it. So I am here.”
Harding said people do not feel safe in downtown Vancouver and businesses cannot afford deductibles to pay for multiple claims.
Meet the council candidates
There are 59 people running for city council in Vancouver, down from 71 four years ago.
But with more political parties, it seems to be a greater challenge for voters to work their way through the ballot.
All the incumbents are running again, except for mayoral candidate Hardwick.
There are some storylines worth exploring for the council race.
Forward Together’s attempt to support the mayor
Stewart is taking a new approach to elections and it includes working with a team.
Forward Together has put forward six candidates for council: Dulcy Anderson, Jeanette Ashe, Hilary Brown, Alvin Singh, Tesicca Truong and Russil Wvong.
Singh worked as Stewart’s communications director, while both Truong and Ashe ran recently for the BC NDP. Ashe is Stewart’s wife.
None of the candidates are incumbents and are focusing on affordability and the climate crisis in an attempt to provide Stewart support if he is re-elected.
OneCity looking for council re-enforcements
OneCity may not have a mayoral candidate but they do have an unequivocal leader.
Christine Boyle has been one of the most active councillors over the past four years and is seeking re-election.
Boyle ran alongside just one other candidate four years ago, now the party is running four candidates including Iona Bonamis, Ian Crowell and Matthew Norris.
Describing themselves as ‘a progressive voice’ on council, OneCity has championed the city’s Climate Emergency Action Plan, the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and expanding non-market, co-op and rental housing across Vancouver.
The Greens
In 2011 Adriane Carr made history as Vancouver’s first-ever Green city councillor. Then three years later she made history again getting 74,077 votes to get re-elected to city hall as the highest vote-getting councillor.
Four years ago, Carr topped the polls once again with 69,730.
The Greens have focused on the city council, once again not running a mayoral candidate.
Pete Fry was the second-highest vote-getter four years ago and will be running alongside Carr on the Green ticket.
Michael Wiebe finished sixth, earning one of the ten council spots in the last election cycle. The three incumbents are running alongside Greens Devyani Singh and Stephanie Smith.
Housing and climate activism remain at the core of the party hoping to once again have power around the council table.
The former NPAers and the one who remains
The NPA is now a shell of the political party that once dominated the political conversation in Vancouver.
Hardwick left the party to run with TEAM. The team council slate includes Cleta Brown, Sean Nardi, Param Nijjar, Grace Quan, Stephen Roberts and Bill Tieleman.
None of them are incumbents and they cover various provincial and federal parties on the political spectrum.
Lisa Dominato, Rebecca Bligh and Sarah Kirby-Yung all left the party and are running for re-election to council under the ABC Vancouver banner. The three incumbents are joined by council candidates Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner, Brian Montague and Lenny Zhou.
The party is broad in its approach, speaking to speeding up permit approvals for housing, working with other councils in Metro Vancouver on transit and ramping up police to address public safety.
The three incumbents running now for ABC were the final three to earn a spot on the council in 2018.
This leaves Melissa De Genova. Elected in both 2014 and 2018, De Genova is running again for the NPA.
Vancouverites have watched De Genova grow up on council and she has been a staunch critic of Stewart. She is running alongside Elaine Allan, Cinnamon Bhayani, Ken Charko and Morning Lee.
The others
Jean Swanson is once again running for COPE and finished with the fourth most council votes in 2018.
The nearly 80-year-old has been one of Vancouver’s best-known housing advocates and is running on a COPE slate with Tanya Webking, Breen Oulette and Nancy Trigueros.
The city’s oldest left-wing party continues to champion housing access for the hardest to house.
The most recent left-wing political dynasty, Vision Vancouver, is once again hoping to get some influence at city hall.
Gregor Robertson’s old party is running Lesli Boldt, Honieh Barzegari and current park board commissioner Stuart Mackinnon. Stewart has endorsed the slate and hopes people vote for them and his own Forward Together Party.
Vote socialist candidate Sean Orr got some attention during the campaign after being escorted from a mayoral debate hosted by the Vancouver Police Union after holding a sign reading ‘police out of politics’.
Progress Vancouver is running a slate of candidates including May He, Mauro Francis, Morgane Oger, David Chin, Marie Noelle Rosa and Asha Hayer.
The Big Issues
Housing
All conversations in Vancouver begin and end with housing. The dream of owning a detached home has died for many people, there is almost nowhere to rent and the city continues to grapple with issues of density and homelessness.
Forward Together plans to build 220,000 new homes over 10 years including market and below-market rentals, social housing, co-operatives and condos. Stewart’s party wants to keep the Empty Homes Tax and add permanent vacancy control to new rentals.
An ABC Majority is promising to increase social and supportive housing investments in line with the consumer price index (CPI) every year and will double the number of co-op housing units in Vancouver within the next four years.
Sim’s party also will eliminate the city’s housing construction backlog promising three days to approve home renovations, three weeks to approve single-family homes and townhouses, three months to approve professionally designed multi-family and mid-rise projects where existing zoning is already in place and one year (down from six years) to approve a high-rise or large-scale projects.
TEAM’s platform promises to work with neighbourhood residents to get development input and stop spot rezoning without neighbourhood input.
Progress Vancouver is focused on fast-tracking permitting around schools, playgrounds and transit for multi-unit housing designed for families. The party is promising to build 136,000 market and social housing units over 10 years.
Public safety
A sharp increase in random attacks, targeted racism and vandalism has led to public safety being a crucial election issue.
ABC Vancouver has made this issue number one in the campaign, promising to hire 100 new police officers and 100 mental health nurses within two years. The party is also committed to outfitting police officers with body cameras and launching an anti-racism task force.
The NPA is also prioritizing public safety, releasing a 19-point public safety plan including re-evaluating the process of the Downtown Community Court and reinstating the school liaison program.
TEAM plans to review the city’s fire and police services to better reflect current and future needs due to population changes.
Forward Together’s public safety plan is built on expanding 311 services to include specialized mental health and addiction experts to be dispatched to support in a public safety situation.
Transportation
This is one area where the major parties differ a lot on policy.
Forward Together is proposing a “Vancouver Loop” SkyTrain expansion including the extension all the way along Broadway to UBC then a new subway extension line along the 41st and 49th Avenue corridor connecting to Metrotown in Burnaby.
TEAM says it will abandon the current SkyTrain proposal to UBC and replace it with four new light rail lines.
ABC is pushing for a SkyTrain extension to UBC and an east-west line along Hastings Street going from Waterfront all way to the North Shore via the Second Narrows Bridge.
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