VancouverMETRO VANCOUVER NEWS
Here is who will serve on Vancouver city council under new mayor Pete Fry
Vancouver’s new council will have no party majority: the Greens and COPE each won four seats, while OneCity and ABC each took one. The election also produced multi-party park and school boards.
Mayor-elect Pete Fry will lead a Vancouver city council with no party holding a majority. The Green Party and COPE each won four seats; OneCity and ABC, led by outgoing mayor Ken Sim, each won one. ABC held a council majority for the past four years, when councillors voted along party lines.
The mixed council follows a pre-election agreement among the Greens, COPE and OneCity to cap the number of left-of-centre candidates on the ballot, increasing the odds of defeating Sim and ABC. On election night, Fry said he looked forward to working with a mixed council. He said councillors could work together by creating a respectful culture in which each councillor is respected and can contribute in areas of proficiency. He said he wanted them to set partisan politics aside and work as a collective council.
The Greens’ four council seats will be held by Annette Reilly, Stephanie Smith, Camil Dumont and Bridget Burns. COPE’s Sean Orr received 83,038 votes, the highest total of any council candidate and more than 15,000 ahead of Sim.
Almost immediately after Orr first won a seat in last year’s byelection, Sim held a news conference denouncing his not-yet-sworn-in council colleague as hateful and antisemitic. A code of conduct investigation by the city’s integrity commissioner found that Sim misused the influence of his office and “objectively harassed” Orr by holding the news conference. Sim also told Chinese-language media that Orr had distributed illicit drugs on Christmas Day, prompting a defamation suit that is currently before the courts.
When the new council is sworn in, Orr will be joined by fellow COPE representatives Chloe Leslie, Devyani Singh and Solomon Yi-Kieran. OneCity incumbent Lucy Maloney will return to council. ABC’s Mike Klassen was re-elected and is the party’s only candidate elected to municipal office this time.
The park board will have three Green Party commissioners and four from COPE. The school board will include four COPE trustees, three from OneCity and two from the Greens.