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The Biggest Moments in the Vancouver Election

It’s been a wild ride. Don’t forget to vote Saturday. And visit The Tyee Sunday for all the results.

Jen St. Denis and Christopher Cheung 14 Oct 2022TheTyee.ca

Jen St. Denis is The Tyee’s Downtown Eastside reporter. Find her on Twitter @JenStDen. Christopher Cheung reports on urban issues for The Tyee. Follow him on Twitter at @bychrischeung.

[Editor's Note: Our reporters will be there at the campaign parties Saturday night to report who won, who lost and why. Tune in here at The Tyee Sunday morning for our coverage.]

One candidate was caught on video counselling landlords to poo in their tenants’ toilets. A billionaire was revealed to be behind a mysterious right-wing election group. The mayor’s campaign staff accidentally dropped a secret fundraising list on the sidewalk.

This has been one of the hardest-fought, dirtiest and most surprising Vancouver election campaigns in recent memory. With no fewer than 10 political parties vying for control of city government, it’s been a wild ride.

Here’s a recap of the biggest moments of the election. And while we’ve got you, make sure you know where and how to vote: check out this handy guide provided by the City of Vancouver.

Mysterious, deep-pocketed forces

A pair of stories by Vancouver Sun reporter Dan Fumano pulled back the curtain on who was behind two mysterious groups that have tried to influence the civic election.

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson had been urging his business contacts to donate to an organization called Pacific Prosperity Network, which had been formed to support right-wing candidates in the municipal election. Peter Wall, a real estate developer, was behind a Facebook group called Views of Vancouver that bought ads to criticize Mayor Kennedy Stewart and praise then-NPA mayoral candidate John Coupar.

Political scientist Stewart Prest said the examples show it might be time to update Elections BC rules on third-party advertising.

“If we accept a fundamental principle that democracy is premised on the idea that citizens should be able to participate equally, and those with greater wealth shouldn’t get an outsized megaphone because of it... it’s appropriate to update the rules from time-to-time, to try and limit that kind of influence,” Prest said.

From Coupar to a cop

Vancouver’s oldest political party, the Non-Partisan Association, had to scramble after mayoral candidate John Coupar dropped out less than three months before election day. The party managed to find a replacement in Fred Harding, a cop-turned-businessman who had previously run with a party called Vancouver 1st.

Sim and Stewart trade barbs about ‘road tax’ advertising

Sim’s early campaign advertisements focused heavily on warning voters that if Stewart was re-elected, he would introduce congestion pricing — a “road tax” — that would make it more expensive to drive into the city. The ads led to a war of words between the two campaigns, with Stewart accusing Sim of “misleading” advertising and Sim insisting that his claims were accurate.

Fact checks of the “road tax” show that Stewart would be very unlikely to implement congestion pricing during the next four-year term.

A shopping list of donors?

It was a story that could only happen in Vancouver: homeless West Side writer Stanley Woodvine found a printed spreadsheet on the sidewalk outside of a No Frills, which just happened to be a fundraising list for Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s party, Forward Together.

The list showed the party had been targeting many of the city’s most prominent real estate developers to lead fundraising efforts, sparking a conversation about the role of donations and corporate influence in elections.

A middle-aged man in glasses and a dark blue shirt holds up a paper document.
On Sept. 13, Stanley Woodvine found a very interesting two-page document on a West Broadway sidewalk. Photo by Christopher Cheung.

Morning Lee’s advice for landlords

In a city where renters are perpetually struggling to find and keep a home, some off-the-cuff advice from one candidate caused a stink. NPA council candidate Morning Lee, who is also a realtor, counselled landlords to defecate in their tenants’ washroom to “assert ownership.” Lee made the comments in a 2021 Mandarin-language video that resurfaced during the campaign. When reporters followed up with Lee, he apologized and said it was a “joke.”

Green Party privacy breach

The Vancouver Greens abruptly jettisoned park board candidate Liam Menard, saying Menard had admitted to mishandling contact information for party supporters. The Greens also said they suspected that some of the information had ended up in the hands of another party, Progress Vancouver.

OneCity volunteer’s ‘toxic’ chat

Housing has been Vancouver’s number one most contentious political topic for years and the conversation has become extra toxic on Twitter. Members of two camps — one dubbed the supply-side, who believe the solution is to build more housing, and another dubbed the demand-side, who believe in more action on speculation and money laundering — have developed personal dislikes and publicly spar on Twitter.

Rohana Rezel, on the side of demand solutions, revealed that he had been sent a screenshot of a private chat amongst the opposing side. One message, from OneCity volunteer Tim Ell, proposed “we give [Rezel] a taste of his own medicine and openly wonder why he’s associating on Twitter with possible pedophiles.”

Ell apologized in a tweet, admitting that he got caught up in “toxic, bad faith politics,” that he would never accuse anyone of anything without evidence and that the screenshots were taken “wildly out of context.” He has since deleted his account. OneCity called the leaked message “inconsistent with our founding values” and said it was “glad to see that the individual understands that his language was inappropriate and has apologized and committed to do better.”

Boyle and the blogger

Speaking of online strife, VanRamblings, a politics blog run by Raymond Tomlin, published a post about OneCity’s incumbent Coun. Christine Boyle that was blasted as inappropriate by candidates of all stripes and called "sexist and gross" by readers.

A man dressed in red wears a shocked expression while looking at his phone.
Toxic texts by a OneCity volunteer and sexist blogging smearing a OneCity candidate popped up on Vancouver voters’ screens this election, followed by an apology and deletion. Photo via Shutterstock.

The post, called "The Death of Christine Boyle’s Mean Girl Act as a Civic Politician," featured conversations Tomlin overheard, and then participated in, at a massage therapist’s office about Boyle. Anonymous sources, one of whom supposedly knew her since high school, made personal statements about Boyle’s character.

After the backlash, Tomlin made edits to his original post but eventually took it down.

Kennedy Stewart’s ‘Vancouver loop’

There comes a point in every election when candidates whip out fantastical promises; one incumbent councillor calls it a “silly season” of “sparkle ponies and pixie dust.”

Kennedy Stewart said that if he’s re-elected mayor, he’ll push for a new SkyTrain to complete a “Vancouver Loop,” from UBC to Metrotown through the city’s south. For now, that appears to be a tall order as the next stretch of new rail that the region’s mayors are eyeing for Vancouver is getting the SkyTrain from Arbutus to UBC. Planning for this stretch is underway, but full financing is yet to be confirmed.

Ken Sim’s transit moment

In response to Stewart’s loopy plan, Sim held a press conference alongside Richard Stewart, the mayor of Coquitlam, and Mike Little, mayor of the District of North Vancouver. At the event, Sim advocated for a SkyTrain extension from North Vancouver to the Hastings Park neighbourhood in Vancouver.

There are currently no concrete plans to develop such a route, but transit is planned regionally in Metro Vancouver, with a number of mayors and First Nations leaders sitting on TransLink’s Mayors' Council. Sim, Little and Stewart said it was important to support regional planning — not just advocate for transit expansions that would only benefit one municipality.

The NPA and the NBA

Here’s another fantastical promise: NPA candidate Harding announced that he’d bring the NBA back to Vancouver.

“[W]e have never lost our heart or our hope that we will bring a team back,” Harding said in a release. “Bringing back the NBA to Vancouver will be a cornerstone of an NPA-led majority with me as mayor.”

Out of focus basketball players play on the foreground. An in focus sign in the backdrop reads "Keep the Grizzlies Canadian."
Fans mourn the impending move of the Vancouver Grizzlies at a 2001 game. This civic election, NPA mayoral candidate Fred Harding promised a rebound. Photo by Aaron Harris, the Canadian Press.

Vancouver lost its Grizzlies in 2001 after six lowly seasons. Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini had thought about bringing a team back to Vancouver, but said it’d be too expensive.

Harding’s idea for an NBA return isn’t new. He announced the same thing back in 2018 when he ran for mayor with the Vancouver 1st party.

The Vancouver Police Union endorses Ken Sim

In a break from tradition, the VPU endorsed a mayoral candidate. Their decision came after reviewing a public safety questionnaire from mayoral candidates, their party platforms and stances taken by candidates at a debate that they sponsored.

Sim’s party ABC said they were “honoured” to receive the VPU’s endorsement, while critics called it inappropriate.

“Police have a huge amount of authority and power in people’s lives. For democracy to function effectively, those who have that power have to be trusted by all sides of being impartial,” said political scientist Stewart Prest of Quest University in a Tyee article on the endorsement.

Sim’s secret outsourcing company

With just over a week to go before election day, the NDP-allied site PressProgress published a story about a little-known company Ken Sim co-founded 18 years ago. In 2004, the BC Liberal government was busy contracting out work that had previously been done by members of the Hospital Employees' Union, and Sim’s company — CareSource Staffing Solutions — was there to pick up the slack. PressProgress reported that the company “had a documented history of questionable labour practices and operated at facilities flagged by inspectors for ‘health and safety hazards.’”

What’s in a ‘usual name’?

Vancouver has no specific rules about what constitutes a candidate’s “usual name” to run on ballots.

This year, 15 candidates submitted names in other languages in addition to their Latin-character names. Some of those candidates received those other names at birth, due to their heritage. Others received them later in life, prompting accusations of "cultural appropriation" in an attempt to pander to voters who use languages other than English.

It prompted Vancouver’s chief election officer to challenge the practice in provincial court, arguing that some of those candidates had run in the past with only one name. The judge said there wasn’t enough time before the election to make a decision, so all 15 candidates get to have their names on the ballot in more than one language.

Can you name our housing ministers?

At a mayoral debate hosted by UBC’s Sauder business school, Kennedy Stewart stressed the importance of partnerships with senior governments to address Vancouver’s tent cities. He then challenged Ken Sim to name the provincial and federal housing ministers.

“Who you spoke to?” said Sim. “Sorry, I don’t follow your calendar, so I have no idea.”

“What are the names of the provincial and federal housing ministers?” repeated Stewart.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter,” said Sim.

It proved to be a successful gamble by Stewart, whose team then made a video of Sim’s stumble.  [Tyee]

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