Pete Fry defeats Ken Sim to become Vancouver’s next mayor

Voters have elected Pete Fry as Vancouver’s next mayor, defeating incumbent Ken Sim after a single term. “We’re not going to let you down,” Fry told cheering supporters Saturday night. “We love this city a lot, and we’re here to work for it and fight for it.” Fry, the Green Party mayor-elect, has served on council since 2018 and was among the most vocal critics of Sim and his A Better City (ABC) majority over the past four years. Days before the election, Sim declined Fry’s challenge to a one-on-one debate. In his concession speech, Sim called his time at city hall the highlight of his life, saying he would look back on it on his deathbed as probably the most meaningful thing he had been involved in.

Fry’s win followed an agreement by competing progressive parties to rally behind his candidacy and avoid splitting the left-wing vote. COPE’s Stephanie Allen and OneCity’s William Azaroff both withdrew from the mayoral race over the summer. The full council lineup had not been declared by midnight, but Fry appeared set to lead a collaborative council made up largely of representatives from those three progressive parties. He is the son of longtime local Liberal MP Hedy Fry. Speaking to CTV News from Green campaign headquarters, his mother said she was proud of him, describing him as principled and hardworking, and saying he loves the city and will do the work required of him.

After dominating city council, the school board and the park board following the 2022 election, ABC appeared poised to elect just one candidate late Saturday: incumbent Mike Klassen. COPE’s Sean Orr was the first winning council candidate declared and received more votes than any non-mayoral candidate. Orr had frequently been a target of Sim’s political attacks during the campaign. One ABC ad sought to discredit Fry through his association with Orr. Orr’s defamation lawsuit against Sim remains ongoing. It concerns false allegations Sim made to Chinese-language media that Orr, a COPE councillor, had distributed drugs on Christmas Day.

**Vancouver Special 2.0 and other proposals**

Some progressive voters were dissatisfied with Fry’s housing record. He voted with ABC on most major housing motions, including the vote to cancel the controversial Villages Plan. The plan sought to increase housing density, including by rezoning large areas of the city for low-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings of up to eight storeys. It drew significant neighbourhood opposition. Only OneCity’s Lucy Maloney voted to keep it.

In its election platform, Fry and the Green Party promised to create an affordable housing czar focused on partnerships and policies to deliver non-market and supportive housing. Fry also pledged to expand the supply of affordable homes, co-ops and social housing through faster zoning and permitting. The platform proposed emphasizing pre-approved designs for rental buildings and individual homes to reduce costs and approval times. These included modular or prefabricated designs the party dubbed “Vancouver Special 2.0.”

**Other notable platform promises**

Fry has signalled a desire to expand the city’s bike lanes, including along Broadway while construction continues on the corridor’s subway line. He argues that the planned rapid transit service will mean fewer cars and create more room for cyclists. He also wants to extend the Broadway line to the University of British Columbia.

Other Green Party proposals include pausing the use of artificial intelligence chatbots in Vancouver schools while their potential cognitive impacts on students are reviewed, and placing a moratorium on “micro-suites” that can fit a bathroom and kitchen into spaces as small as 250 square feet. Fry’s platform also promises to pursue a “24-hour economy” through expanded zoning for live music, around-the-clock “creative land uses,” extended permits and more nighttime transit. The full platform is available on the Green Party of Vancouver website: https://petefry.ca/Platform2026/Platform_2026_-_Green_Party_of_Vancouver_(1).pdf

**ABC’s plebiscite questions**

Sim and his ABC majority reconvened council for a special meeting in August to add two plebiscite questions to Vancouver’s election ballots. The opposition called the move political theatre. Fry walked out of the meeting, calling it “electioneering by punching down on folks in health crisis” and a “misguided frustration of the democratic process.” The city did not share results Saturday, so it was unclear whether a majority of voters answered “yes” to either question.

The first asked whether voters supported the city “strengthening its laws to forbid open-air hard drug use,” which is already illegal. ABC’s more detailed proposal was to amend municipal bylaws so police could issue $0 tickets to anyone caught using drugs in public, briefly detain them and seize their illegal substances without a more cumbersome criminal investigation.

The second asked whether the city should “formally ask the province of B.C.” to add involuntary care beds in Vancouver. It suggested parts of the soon-to-be-vacated St. Paul’s Hospital site downtown as a possible temporary location. Critics noted that the sought-after land had been sold to a developer years earlier for nearly $1 billion to help finance the replacement St. Paul’s Hospital near Main Street and Terminal Avenue. Before the plebiscite, Sim had also publicly called on the province several times to provide local involuntary care beds, and Premier David Eby said his government supported the idea. On Friday, Providence Health Care confirmed that the replacement St. Paul’s Hospital will include 90 secure mental health beds, along with other mental health and substance-use care spaces.