Ken Sim Wants to Be Re-Elected Mayor of Vancouver

Starting in the spring, we set out to interview most of the candidates* running for mayor of Vancouver. It took a while — and several requests — but we finally had an interview booked with incumbent Mayor Ken Sim in late September.

When reporter Katie Hyslop was laid low by the flu, Tyee senior editor Jen St. Denis contacted the party to let them know she’d fill in as the interviewer. Sim’s campaign staff asked us to reschedule with Hyslop instead. Despite several attempts on our part, the interview was never rebooked.

Sim grew up in Vancouver, the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, and he’s spoken about his family experiencing frequent evictions and moves as they attempted to put down roots in the city. He’s also talked about facing pressure from gangs in high school.

After his hardscrabble upbringing, Sim found success in business: he’s the founder of a private home care business called Nurse Next Door and part owner of Rosemary Rocksalt, a chain of bagel restaurants. He currently lives in the exclusive Point Grey neighbourhood and is the father of four sons who are now young adults.

In 2022, Sim and his ABC Vancouver party won an extraordinary majority on city council, park board and school board. With a focus on crime and social disorder, city council poured money into the Vancouver Police Department and quickly hired 100 police officers, fulfilling a major campaign promise. The party didn’t fully keep a promise to hire 100 mental health nurses, in part because health care is a provincial, not civic, responsibility. Today, Sim says more than 50 mental health professionals have been hired.

Sim and ABC have weathered numerous controversies over the past four years. In 2023, an ABC-dominated council oversaw an aggressive decampment of homeless people on East Hasting Street, an action that was criticized by shelter providers who said the city had not offered homeless people housing before forcing them to move. Today, Sim is listing the fact that there are no longer any large encampments in the city as an achievement.

ABC also tried to get rid of the elected park board, a plan the party has abandoned. Sim is now touting his party’s promise to spend $400 million to revitalize five community centres over the next four years, although there is criticism of how the five have been chosen. Sim has made a campaign promise to replace the Vancouver Aquatic Centre with another 50-metre pool, instead of the smaller, 25-metre pool currently planned.

After raising property taxes in the 2023 and 2024 budgets, the party finally delivered a campaign promise of a zero per cent increase for property taxes in the 2025 budget — but the “zero means zero” budget came with cuts in most city departments (except for police and the fire department) and increases in other fees.

There have been high-profile defections and ejections, and two of Sim’s former allies — former campaign manager Kareem Allam and former ABC councillor Rebecca Bligh — are now campaigning against him.

Sim’s “tech bro” antics — ranging from shotgunning a beer to installing a personal gym at Vancouver City Hall, changing in front of a (male) reporter, dressing too casually at a Remembrance Day ceremony and appearing in bitcoin videos from his office — have also coloured voters’ perceptions.

Sim has largely toned down that aspect of his personality since ABC suffered a bruising defeat in a 2025 byelection.

As Sim campaigns for re-election, he’s acknowledging that ABC didn’t get everything right and is saying that his team didn’t realize the state of the city’s finances at the beginning of his term.

Now that ABC understands how the city works, he said during a debate on radio station CKNW, “we're very confident we can get the rest of our mandate achieved.”

Sim is taking credit for crime rates falling — but he said complaints about “social disorder” are up, and he’s urging voters to vote yes on two plebiscite questions that have been introduced to the ballot by ABC councillors. One question asks voters if they’re in favour of Vancouver “strengthening its laws to forbid open-air hard drug (Heroin, Meth, Fentanyl, and Crack) use in public spaces,” while the other asks if the city should ask the province to convert St. Paul’s Hospital into a “secure medical facility” to provide both voluntary and involuntary care for people suffering from “severe substance use and mental health disorders.”

On the campaign trail, Sim has also touted his party’s opposition to an overdose prevention site on Helmcken Street in Yaletown as an example of how ABC councillors have stood up to the province in support of residents who opposed the site.

With B.C.’s civic election days away, polls show Sim and his main rival, Green Party of Vancouver Coun. Pete Fry, neck and neck. While Sim may have lost some of his “big tent” of support, his base of homeowners, businesses, older voters and recent immigrant neighbourhoods in South Vancouver could be strong enough to deliver him another win.

These are the questions we would ask Ken Sim, if we could:

• Everyone has a story of what kind of city Vancouver is. What kind of city is Vancouver to you?
• Why should voters give you another four years?
• In ABC’s 2022 platform, you promised an “overarching 20-year social and supportive housing plan for the city in partnership with BC Housing and other housing partners.” We are now two years into a pause on council hearing new supportive-housing development proposals in the city, with a few exceptions. What does the future of supportive housing look like if you are elected mayor again?
• When and why have you responded “No” to a request from the Vancouver Police Department?
• How can the city complete the redevelopment of five community centres, over four years, with just $400 million?
• Small DIY and queer-focused event spaces are seeing the city crack down on their ability to hold events. How will you work with smaller venues and event producers to support a vibrant Vancouver nightlife that fits everyone’s needs, not just mainstream Granville Street nightclub owners?
• You previously promised and delivered line-by-line budgets — until the 2026 budget. How much detail will you provide on future budgets?
• Inflation pushes costs up. How will the city pay for another property tax freeze?
• Earlier this year you publicly apologized to Coun. Sean Orr for spreading false accusations that he had distributed illegal drugs. The city’s integrity commissioner found you had harassed Orr on two occasions before this. You continue to focus negatively on Orr during the campaign, including in a video ad. Why should Vancouver voters trust your assessment of Orr?
• The 2022 ABC platform promised to “support all Vancouver Coastal and Providence Health Authority-led initiatives that enhance the safety of the drug supply.” Yet you successfully advocated for the cancellation of an overdose prevention site Vancouver Coastal Health wanted, and advocate involuntary drug treatment. What changed?
• Regarding the plebiscite questions: Public illicit drug use is already illegal in B.C. How would the city strengthen enforcement bylaws against something that is already illegal?
• At a recent “Neighbours of 900 Helmcken” event, you said it is “highly probable” we will lose our city. Yet reports of violent crime are down, stranger attacks were decreasing before the 2022 election and you credit the city’s investment in policing for both. Please explain the conflict between your position that the city is almost lost but also safer because of ABC.
• In 2022 ABC promised to double the number of co-op housing units in Vancouver by 2026. What progress has been made towards that promise and why?
• You have missed 690 council votes. That’s almost 100 more than your predecessor Kennedy Stewart missed. Why did you skip votes and will that continue if you are re-elected?
• In 2025, the city's Indigenous relations director left her position for "integrity reasons." Fairly or not, this raised questions about the city's relationship with the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh nations, as well as urban Indigenous people. How would you work to improve those relationships?
• ABC councillors voted for city staff to create the Villages Plan pilot program. For a 25-metre pool at the aquatic centre. To dismantle the park board. To introduce traffic-calming measures like banana barriers. ABC is now taking opposing positions on these issues. Why should voters trust that these are your final positions?

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*Editor’s note: Because of staffing capacity, we could not interview every mayoral candidate currently running, including independent candidates. We limited our interviews to candidates running with a party alongside other council candidates.