BC municipal elections (Oct 15 - today!)

[Hatman 🍁]

BC heads to the polls today to elect mayors, councils, park boards, school trustees and regional district directors.

The races in Vancouver and Surrey look to be the ones to watch.

In Vancouver, former NDP MP and current mayor Kennedy Stewart is in a tight race against businessman Ken Sim, who leads the centre-right ABC Vancouver party, a splinter from Vancouver's traditional centre-right party, the NPA. The other main candidates are: former NPA councillor Colleen Hardwick who leads TEAM for a livable Vancouver, another centre-right party that has gone hardcore NIMBY. They also have some support from NIMBY New Democrats like Bill Tieleman; Liberal Party strategist Mark Marissen (former husband of Christy Clark) of Progress Vancouver, a centrist YIMBY party that has got the endorsement of former PM Paul Martin; and the NPA's standard bearer Fred Harding, who ran in 2018 for the right wing Vancouver 1st party.

Polls are suggesting a tight race between Stewart and Sim, with Hardwick in a distant third.

Vancouver has a ridiculous plurality at-large voting system, so the council race will be anyone's guess. Last election the NPA won 5 of the council's 11 seats, while the remaining seats went to the Greens (3), the left wing COPE (1), the centre-left One City (1) and of course Kennedy Stewart, who was elected as an Independent. Since then, the NPA has collapsed, and only has one councillor left, with 3 joining Sim's ABC Vancouver party, and Hardwick who started TEAM.  Stewart has started his own party Forward Together.  All of those parties are running candidates for council, as is the moribund Vision Vancouver, a centre-left party that collapsed in 2018 due to the unpopularity of outgoing mayor Gregor Robertson. I'm guessing because there are more centre-left parties contesting that centre-right, they will split the vote, and there will be a right wing majority on council.

And in Surrey, BC's second largest city, there are five main candidates for mayor: Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal, former Liberal MP & MLA Gordie Hogg, former Liberal MLA and city councillor Brenda Locke, incumbent mayor Doug McCallum, and NDP MLA and former MP Jinny Sims. All 5 represent different political parties in the city. Brenda Locke is leading the polls right now, and is helped by McCallum's general unpopularity. McCallum leads the Safe Surrey Coallition, which holds 5 of the 9 council seats (but won 8/9 in 2018). Brenda Locke leads Surrey Connect, which holds 2 seats, and was elected as a member of McCallum's party. The other party on council is Surrey First, whose mayoral candidate is Gordie Hogg.

[Hatman 🍁]

Polls are now closed.

[Hatman 🍁]

Brenda Locke has been narrowly elected as mayor of Surrey, defeating Doug McCallum.

[Hatman 🍁]

Ken Sim has been elected as mayor of Vancouver, defeating Kennedy Stewart.

[Hatman 🍁]

Apparently Young has been mayor since Langford became a city in 1992. The city is growing like gangbusters, so maybe the residents want things to slow down.

I'm reminded of the longstanding mayor of Milton, ON, another fast growing municipality who has been mayor since 1980. He might be facing a serious challenge this year too.

And then there's Hazel McCallion who was mayor of Mississauga for 36 years and never really faced much of a challenge for most of those years.

[Hatman 🍁]

Final result in Surrey:

Brenda Locke, Surrey Connect 28.1% (5 seats)
Doug McCallum, Safe Surrey Coalition: 27.3% (2 seats)
Gordie Hogg, Surrey First: 21.% (2 seats)

[Hatman 🍁]

Final Vancouver results:

Ken Sim, ABC Vancouver: 51.0% (8 seats)
Kennedy Steward, Forward Together: 29.5% (0 seats)
Colleen Hardwick, TEAM: 10.0% (0 seats)

Parties that didn't run for mayor:
Green: 2 seats
OneCity: 1 seat

Park board:
ABC: 6 seats
Green: 1 seat

School trustee:
ABC: 5 seats
Green: 2 seats
OneCity: 1 seat
COPE: 1 seat

[Hatman 🍁]

Burnaby final results

Mayor: Mike Hurley, Ind. (acclaimed)

City council:
Burnaby Citizens Association: 6 seats (+1)
Greens: 1 seat (n/c)
ONE Burnaby: 1 seat (n/c)

The BCA continue their dominance in Burnaby politics. Mike Hillman, the lone One Burnaby councillor lost his seat (he was elected in a 2021 by-election), but former Liberal MLA Richard T. Lee won the lone seat for the party.

[Hatman 🍁]

Final results in Richmond:

Malcolm Brodie (Ind) - 67.6% - incumbent
John Roston (RITE) - 27.0%

Council
RITE Richmond - 3 seats (+1)
ONE Richmond - 2 seats (n/c) (includes former BC Liberal candidate Alexa Loo)
Richmond Rise - 1 seat (+1) (former Liberal MLA Kash Heed)
Richmond Community Coalition - 1 seat (n/c)
Richmond United - 1 seat (n/c)
Richmond Citizens Association - 0 seats (-1) -  this is the NDP affiliated party

Pretty fractured council, but to be expected since no party ran a full slate.

[Hatman 🍁]

Final results in Richmond:

Malcolm Brodie (Ind) - 67.6% - incumbent
John Roston (RITE) - 27.0%

Council
RITE Richmond - 2 seats (n/c)
ONE Richmond - 2 seats (n/c) (includes former Liberal MLA Alexa Loo)
Richmond Rise - 2 seats (+2) (includes former Liberal MLA Kash Heed)
Richmond Community Coalition - 1 seat (n/c)
Richmond United - 1 seat (n/c)
Richmond Citizens Association - 0 seats (-1) -  this is the NDP affiliated party

Pretty fractured council, but to be expected since no party ran a full slate.

RITE won 3 seats, only Kash Heed won for Richmond Rise. Alexa Loo was never a Liberal MLA, but ran for them in 2020. (You might be familiar with her name because she is an Olympic Champion. Interstingly, another Olympian, Evan Dunfee, failed to win the last position on Richmond city council by 446 votes. I could be wrong, but I believe Alexa Loo also lost out her first time around, so Evan Dunfee might want to try again in four years, if the world still exists.)

If RITE hadn't run such a poor quality 4th candidate (since that seems to be the phrase used now to describe Republican U.S Senate candidates) in Jerome Dickey who expressed support for the 'extinction rebellion' illegal protests it can be easily speculated that RITE would have won 4 positions, or half the council.

Former long time city councilor Derek Dang (he ran against Malcolm Brodie for mayor in the byelection in 2001) ran with Kash Heed as the Richmond RISE 'slate' but narrowly lost to Kash Heed.

RITE stands for Richmond Independent Team of Electors.

I didn't know this until today, but ABC (or, as I call them, NPA 2.0) stands for A Better City. I had thought based on their ads that it didn't mean anything. Their adds simply ended with "Change in Vancouver. It's as easy as ABC" which I thought was pretty catchy.

Thanks. I've fixed the errors.

[Hatman 🍁]

Why the heck does a city of 600,000 people not have its own police force anyway? I can understand if there was some sort of Metro Vancouver police department, but relying on the RCMP?