Sim City: Vancouver’s 2022 Municipal Election

Kayla Isomura/The Tyee

After a heated race and hours of voting, Vancouver and the other 161 municipalities in BC have made a crucial decision about who will lead their municipal governments. The 2022 Vancouver municipal election covered the park board commissioners, city councillors, and school board trustees. According to numbers released by the City of Vancouver, of the 472,665 who were registered across the city, only 171,494, or 36.3 per cent of the population, cast their votes as 137 candidates competed for the 27 positions.

In Vancouver, there were sweeps across all of the races, with new mayor Ken Sim’s A Better City (“ABC”) party gaining a super majority on city council, and majorities on the park board and school board. The newly formed ABC party now holds five out of the nine seats on the school board, six of the seven seats on the park board, and relegated other parties to complete minorities on all levels of municipal government.

A former member of Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association, and 2018 mayoral candidate, Ken Sim’s political career began during 2018’s municipal election, finishing as the runner up to former mayor Kennedy Stewart. Four years later, Sim handily beat the mayoral incumbent, Stewart, by a margin upwards of 36,000 votes, and every candidate endorsed by Sim and his party won the seat they were running for. As for Sim, the ABC party leader received 85,732 votes for the city’s mayor, which tops former mayor Gregor Robertson’s past record number of votes for a single candidate.

Sim’s campaigning period did not go without its own set of controversies, however, as the Vancouver Police Union (“VPU”) broke tradition of not endorsing mayoral candidates to express their support for Sim’s platform. On Oct. 5, VPU President Ralph Kaisers said in a statement, “Electing Ken Sim and an ABC majority will ensure that police and other frontline responders will have the resources they need to protect and serve Vancouverites.”

Many felt that the statement was an inappropriate move on the VPU’s end, with experts such as Robert Gordon, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, expressing their opinions that police stay out of politics.

“They’re supposed to be impartial enforcers of the law, and if that is eroded in any way — their independence is eroded because of political interference — then we’ve got a big problem,” he told CBC News in an interview.

Despite the backlash, Sim tweeted that it was an honour to have received the endorsement of the union representing Vancouver’s police, and that “public safety is one of the most important issues facing our city today. Addressing big, complex challenges takes collaboration and a willingness to work together.” According to their party’s platform, the ABC Party is a “modern, inclusive and centrist party, with supporters from across the political spectrum, working to make Vancouver a safer, more affordable, and liveable city.” One of the party’s main goals is safety, with their platform placing an emphasis on the need for more law enforcement officers and nurses within the city. The ABC’s platform states that they intend to hire 100 new police officers and mental health nurses, and increase access to care for addiction recovery and mental health crises.

The ABC also states the need to “work with the Province and Province’s Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act to enhance elected Council representation on the Vancouver Police Board.” Along with public safety, the ABC platform prioritizes the need for more affordable housing solutions in Vancouver, promising to double the amount of co-op housing in the city by 2026 and create a 20-year plan for social and supportive housing.

As for the man himself, one look at Sim’s webpage shows his involvement in well known names across the city, from having co-founded the Rosemary Rocksalt Bagels franchise, to the home healthcare service Nurse Next Door.

He explained to CTV News that the spark that began his political career came from how “[his] kids don’t see a future for themselves” within the current state of Vancouver, as the cost of living within the city continues to skyrocket. “It became more of a foregone conclusion that there was unfinished business in terms of righting the ship of our city to making this place a more affordable, livable, vibrant city for all of us.”