The Tyee Podcast: Vancouver Election Special Episode

Note: Episode transcripts may contain errors. Always check the corresponding audio before quoting any part of the transcript.

Harrison Mooney:
I live in Vancouver. And like many places in B.C., we’re heading into a municipal election. It’s getting crazy. There at least seven political parties. And five candidates are looking to be Vancouver’s next mayor.

It’s a lot to take in— especially with the provincial election a week after. But lucky for me, I know just who to talk to.

This is The Tyee podcast. Every week we dive deeper into the stories shaping the West Coast. Because Canada needs more B.C. I’m Harrison Mooney, and this week: A special Vancouver election episode!

Reporter Katie Hyslop breaks down the top issues, checks in on party promises and helps me wrap my head around who’s who.

So we're recording this on October 1, which is the official kickoff, I'm gonna say, of both municipal election season and spooky season. And boy, can you tell, like biking to work today, it was funny seeing all the lawn signs for like COPE and ABC next to like giant skeletons and fake cobwebs and inflatable ghosts. It was interesting, and frankly, an inauspicious juxtaposition, is that the… Because you know, the man in the hockey mask — is he running? Or should I?

Katie Hyslop:
Is he walking slowly and yet always going to gain on you?

Harrison Mooney:
That's why I'm glad you're with us today. Right off the hop, I do feel like I'm alienating some of our non-local listeners. Like, like I'm coming from East Van, where Halloween is king because we invented it. That's true. Look it up, and we're recording in Vancouver, where elections are a little bit different. Katie, can you explain what makes elections so wonderfully confusing here in Vancouver?

Katie Hyslop:
Sure can. So we have municipal political parties here, which was a new thing to me when I moved here. It was not something that I was familiar with as a concept, and also we have an at-large system instead of a ward system. So when I say municipal parties, I'm not talking about slates of candidates who have something in common, but full-on political parties with the donations and the platforms and the, you know, the signs like you said that the team colors. Some, like the Green Party of Vancouver, have open connections to provincial and federal parties. Some like the new Vancouver Liberal Party are connected by name only to to other parties. So most parties are their own beasts, though they may be popular with particular political parties behind the scenes. So, for example, former BC Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell first came to prominence as a Non Partisan Association mayor of Vancouver. Christine Boyle, who's a current NDP MLA, came from the OneCity Party, which she successfully ran for in Vancouver Council with 2018 in 2018 and 2022, and Vancouver used to have a ward system, which I guess for people who are unfamiliar is when you elect or you have seats for particular areas of the city in terms of representation. So, say in East Van, you might have a couple of different wards, and you would vote for someone in that particular ward versus voting for all 10 city councilors, which is what we have here now in this at-large system that we have. So there have been a couple of plebiscites over the years to to have Vancouver be a ward system, which it was until 1936, but mostly they haven't been successful. It comes up often a lot, though, in the news because we have we tend to have well over 100 people running for 27 seats in this city.

Harrison Mooney:
Yes, we have a lot of candidates. It's hard to keep track of them all. Okay, maybe we should start there then. Who are the big players? Who's the mayor?

Katie Hyslop:
Ken Sim, he is the mayor of Vancouver. He has been since 2022. He is with A Better City Vancouver, which is better known as ABC Vancouver. In 2022, they won not only the mayor seat but the majority seats on council, on School Board and our Park Board.

Harrison Mooney:
Just took over the whole city.

Katie Hyslop:
Oh yeah, it was big. It was a big victory for them.

Harrison Mooney:
And it's going great.

Katie Hyslop:
Depends on who you ask.

Harrison Mooney:
Well, I'm asking you.

Katie Hyslop:
It depends on your definition of right, but I can tell you some of the things that ABC has done that they are campaigning on right now.

Harrison Mooney:
Yes, please.

Katie Hyslop:
So they delivered on a promise to have a 0 per cent property tax increase, they delivered on that this year in 2026. Even though that was an election promise for them in 2022, and they had some pretty high property tax increases after that, including like a 10.3 percent increase in 2023.

Harrison Mooney:
Wait, wait. So they they they said you know zero. Property tax, and then it went way up, and now just before the election, they they got there.

Katie Hyslop:
Yes, yes,

Harrison Mooney:
That's a fun way to do things,

Katie Hyslop:
Isn't it? And this was also they had also previously promised like line by line budgets, so you could see everything in the budget and how it was being spent, and they did provide that up until this year, where the budget went from like being hundreds of pages down to being just dozens of pages, so they they deny that there's been any cuts, but you can't have a freeze, a property tax freeze, without making some cuts, because inflation is constantly going up, so something has to cover that cost. So some other successes that they're they're running on is they successfully lobbied, along with politicians like BC Premier David Eby and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, to introduce federal bail reform for repeat offenders. So they got that. They ran on a campaign of hiring 100 cops and 100 mental health nurses.

Katie Hyslop:
And they did get the 100 cops, but not the 100 nurses. Turns out that's not actually a municipal power. So they say that it's been a success because Vancouver Coastal Health, which is the local health authority, asked for 40 to 50 mental health counselors, so they hired that instead. They have also opened a new policing district in the downtown east side. They opened a new police training center, also in the downtown east side, that the Justice Institute of BC, which trains police in BC, said that we did not need.

Harrison Mooney:
Right but the city did, right.

Katie Hyslop:
Yes.

Harrison Mooney:
The citizens, I should say, were really pushing for more safety, is that? more safety in the downtown east side, which I guess translates to more police.

Katie Hyslop:
Yeah, for for ABC, it definitely translates to more police. It's something the Vancouver Police Department wanted.

Harrison Mooney:
Yes.

Katie Hyslop:
ABC is big on… their big push for a while, and especially during this campaign, is public safety, and for them, public safety equates to police.

Harrison Mooney:
Well, then how come there's all these ghosts in East Van?

Katie Hyslop:
Okay, A couple of other things that they got right, depending on who you ask, they put $2 million into fireworks this past summer.

Harrison Mooney:
Ooh, that's what I would have spent on fireworks if you put me in charge of the budget.

Katie Hyslop:
There you go. They lobbied. They successfully lobbied The Rolling Stones to play in Vancouver.

Harrison Mooney:
Finally.

Katie Hyslop:
And they are campaigning on bringing back the Stanley Park train.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, that's that's a big. I do feel like that's a surprisingly big issue for some people. Like every year, you know, people will be like, "The train is back,” or "The train is not back,” and and it seems to matter.

Katie Hyslop:
Yeah, which is it's cute, it's cool, but it not existing anymore is, I don't think perhaps the large deal that ABC seems to think it is.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, whatever. They spent 2 million on fireworks, and that's the main thing.

Katie Hyslop:
Exactly, and they've they've also promised to spend 400 million to revamp five community centers in Vancouver.

Harrison Mooney:
Do we do we know which ones? Do you have the list in front of you?

Katie Hyslop: I do have the list, and that's the list is part of what's controversial. So back in 2022, the park board and the community center associations, which I think represents something like 19 of the community centres in town, they made sort of prioritized triaged list, I guess, of what community centers should come first in terms of being redeveloped. 72% of the community center, well, actually, park board infrastructure. So that's community centers, pools, rinks in this city are either in poor or very poor condition because they're quite old, and so ABC Majority Council announced this 400 million in renovations for five community centers, they did list some of the ones that are should be at the top, like Kensington and Hastings, but they also listed ones like Kerrisdale

Katie Hyslop:
Anyways, the the main thing that I was trying to say is that a few of the community centers that are not in as much need but happen to be in areas of the city that ABC is very popular found themselves at the top of that list.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. So I mean, I don't want to cast ABC as a certain type of party, but certainly it seems like if you have money, or say a property tax freeze would impact you and your assets, then maybe that's more the party for you. Is that?

Katie Hyslop:
Perhaps Yeah, you could say that

Harrison Mooney:
Because yeah, as somebody who doesn't who doesn't own anything, what's the purpose of a property tax freeze? What does that even do?

Katie Hyslop:
So a property tax freeze will-it's not that you don't pay any property taxes. It's just that you pay the same amount that you did the year before. So it will give you, in a budgeting sense, I guess, a bit of forethought and planning in in knowing how much you're going to have to pay. Everyone is cash dropped right now. I mean, if you drive even if you don't drive, if you probably know that the price of gas is up, groceries are insane. People always talk about how unaffordable it is in Vancouver, anyways. So there are some immediate benefits to it.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. I mean, housing is the main issue, though. I feel like that kind of touches on housing, but isn't doesn't maybe solve the issue of of housing.

Katie Hyslop:
No not at all. In fact, there is evidence that rent- like renters pay property tax through their rent charges through what the landlord charges, but there has been no evidence shown that rents go down when property taxes freeze.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, well, what is their record on housing?

Katie Hyslop:
So homelessness has gone up in Vancouver, and that is you know a confluence of many factors, but ABC has sort of staked their claim on putting up public lands for private housing. That's something they did earlier this year. They also have stopped accepting new supportive housing development pitches for, except for specific groups like supportive housing for women only or for youth from care, and they have gone so far as to associate supportive housing developments with drugs. Earlier this year, Councilor Rebecca Bligh, who used to be with ABC, but was kicked out of the party when she didn't agree on their pause on supportive housing developments, she put forward a motion to reverse that pause. ABC Councilor Lenny Zhou put out a video in Mandarin on WeChat, which is a social media platform, that characterized this this type of housing, supportive housing, which usually is for people who are low income, who are dealing with either mental health issues or drug issues or both. Lenny Zhou told people that this is drug houses for drug users and he even accused fellow councilors of being drug users themselves.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, so I mean that's the incumbent government. Is there anything else we want to say about ABC to to characterize Ken Sim and and and his and his side of things?

Katie Hyslop:
Um, they got rid of the renter's office.

Harrison Mooney:
Oh, that seems like a pretty big deal.

Katie Hyslop:
Yeah, so that was basically a support for people who are renters in the city. They said that there it was a duplication of services with a residential tenancy branch, but many renters disagreed. They ended a subsidy for energy efficient heating and cooling retrofits that would have been helpful for single room occupancy hotels in the downtown east side that can get very hot in the summer. We had that heat dome back in 2021 where a lot of people who died were low income. They also they didn't change the Broadway plan, which has been pretty controversial in terms of rezoning, I guess, around Broadway that would allow developers to convert a lot of our older rentals, our like four and six-story walk-up apartment buildings, into towers, and they also introduced a policy amendment that allows developers to skirt protections for renters, like right of first refusal on new units, if they're building a hotel.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. But all of this said, they did freeze property tax.

Katie Hyslop:
They did, and they're promising to do it again next year.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay. All right. Well, I mean, I think maybe I've been saying this for four years, but I'm getting a sense of this party's priorities. Can we talk about some of the other candidates, and whether we have a sense that any of them are viable, or if we're if we're headed for just you know a second term here for for Ken Sim and ABC.

Katie Hyslop:
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't know if you read columnist Mo Amir's piece in August about how Ken Sim is poised to win re-election. This is based on August polling, but there has been a lot of opposition candidates and parties running specifically to get ABC out. However, there is still enough base support for ABC that they probably won't win another majority. But it's quite possible that Ken Sim could get back in again.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay.

Katie Hyslop:
Municipal election turnout is really low in general, under 40% for most of BC, and so the people who vote the most are generally over 50, and that's a good chunk of ABC's baseBut if we're going to look at the people who are running against Ken Sim, if we believe polls, Pete Fry of the Greens has a pretty good chance. He is actually he's led in the past polls that we have seen.

Harrison Mooney:
Ok, Pete's up.

Katie Hyslop:
Pete is Pete is up. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Pete is up. And if we don't believe polls, I'd say Pete Fry is still a contender. There's Kareem Allam as well, who started the Vancouver Liberal Party. Kareem is probably best known as being ABC's previous campaign manager,

Harrison Mooney:
Right.

Katie Hyslop:
And briefly, Ken Sims' chief of staff.

Harrison Mooney:
They had a falling out.

Katie Hyslop:
They did, particularly over how ABC handled decampment of people living on sidewalks in the downtown east side. So the fire department had been pressing the city to clear people out that it was a fire hazard, that they were blocking entrances to buildings, and that people were using propane fires in their tents. Seems like a legit concern, but there were organizations in the downtown east side who, or and around the city, who try and house people who were requesting that the city wait until they could find housing for these people, and Kareem Allam had assured them that yes, we will do that, and then the city didn't do that. They just moved in and pushed people out, threw away their belongings, and it was a big snafu. And so that's not why-like Kareem Allam was fired over another scandal, but he said that he had a big falling out with the mayor for that reason. And then the third person who could possibly be a contender here is Colleen Hardwick with TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. She was previously a city councilor from 2018 to 2022 with the same party that Ken Sim originally ran with, Non Partisan Association.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. Yeah, the NPA, and then the NPA kind of split off, and and some of them became ABC.

Katie Hyslop: Some of them became ABC. Some of them became Team. Some of them became Vote Vancouver, which is Rebecca Bligh's party. Yeah, and the NPA, which was actually a really long-standing party in Vancouver, doesn't appear to exist anymore.

Harrison Mooney:
Hmm. Yeah, they'll be back. You know, I lived here long enough. They'll be back. Okay. Well, so you know, it's interesting. You know, you mentioned Pete Fry, and I'm getting a sense that he's kind of the the the main progressive candidate, right? I mean Rebecca Bligh and and Colleen Hardwick are, I mean, I don't know where would we put them on the on the grand political spectrum like centre, centre right?

Katie Hyslop:
I would put them center and probably the Vancouver Liberals as well. But every time we do this, and I've been told because I talking to my editor Jen St. Denis, who has done municipal reporting for the Tyee before, everyone disagrees about who belongs in progressive, who belongs in center, and when we say centre in Vancouver, that can still mean that you, you know, support safe injection and overdose prevention sites, which would put you on the far left in a lot of Canada.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay. Well, one thing I'm acutely aware of in Vancouver politics is the progressive side's tendency to split the vote multiple ways.

Katie Hyslop:
Yes. So the progressive parties, which we will, you know, let's let's stake our claim and they and say that they are COPE, the Greens, and OneCity. They heard those cries about the splitting of the vote, and they, since last fall, I believe, had been locked in negotiations with each other about how many candidates they were going to run for city council, park board, and school board, they finally came to an agreement on that in the spring. No more than 13 candidates each running. But they also came to an agreement over the summer that whoever had the mayoral candidate that seemed to be the most popular and had the most the best chance of winning would be the one mayoral candidate for. Obviously, they'd represent their own party, but the other parties would drop their mayoral candidates and unofficially rally behind because they they weren't sure about the election rules about endorsing another party's candidate, but unofficially rallying behind them. So this late August, early September, the COPE mayoral candidate Stephanie Allen stepped down, and then the one city candidate William Azaroff stepped down. So that leaves Pete Fry.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, well then let's talk about Pete Fry. Sure. Tell me more about his party and his record and who he is and where he's from, and you know all that other stuff. And before you do, I always have to jump in because I know that he's Hedy Fry's kid, and Hedy Fry delivered my wife, and I just think that's a really interesting bit of Vancouver trivia.

Katie Hyslop:
That's — I — okay. I knew obviously Hedy Fry is is part of my introduction to Pete Fry, but I did-I'd forgotten that fact about your wife, so that's pretty crazy. So Hedy Fry, for anybody who doesn't know, how could you not? She's a legendary Liberal MP. She's my MP. She brought down Kim Campbell in the 1993 election, and for people who are too young to know what that means, Kim Campbell was briefly our only female prime minister in Canada. She unfortunately was sort of slotted into that position after Mulroney stepped down, and so yeah, Hedy Fry was a family doctor, new to politics, and managed to kick Kim Campbell out of her seat, and has held that seat since 1993. She's one of the longest-standing MPs in Canada. She made huge waves supporting rights for queer people, especially in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Helped get gay marriage passed, and she's one of Canada's best-known Black MPs as well. So Pete Fry, her son

Harrison Mooney:
Right a political dynasty

Katie Hyslop:
Yes. Exactly. So he has been on council since 2018. Fry was the only voice of opposition to ABC on council until 2025 by-election that brought in One City's Lucy Maloney and COPE’s Sean Orr. Pete also just tends to show up to stuff around town. One of our staffers lives in a housing co-op and mentioned that they were celebrating an anniversary and Pete Fry just showed up. They, I mean, they invited him, but they didn't expect people to show up.

Katie Hyslop:
He did not crash, but yeah, he does. There was a a tally of votes the council has taken since 2025 that by election, and Pete Fry has often voted with ABC councilors, they looked. They looked at 50 votes within that time, but they didn't really look at the reasons why people voted together. Just the final votes. So there is that criticism of Pete, but he has stood up to them.

Harrison Mooney:
Tell me what he did. I know that he he he stood up on bringing back the renter's office.

Katie Hyslop:
Yes, he wants to bring back the renter's office. He's advocated against private housing on public lands. He is pro supportive housing and safe drug consumption sites. He pushed back on cuts to environmental protections. Like now that we ABC had reintroduced natural gas heating to residential new residential builds in the city, which the city had banned just a few years before. He also has a lot of questions about how we spend money on police and how much money we spend on police.

Harrison Mooney:
How much money do we spend on police?

Katie Hyslop:
It was close to 500 million this time around for 2026. The police asked for a budget increase for 2026, but they also asked for 17 million in overtime payment. Or not overtime, so over budget. So they'd gone 17 million over their 2025 budget, asked the city to cover that. They got both.
It is a third of the city budget, and they got the highest budget increase for the 2026 budget. So to remind you again, there had to be cuts for the 0 per cent property tax, and yet the the police got to go up 10 per cent

Harrison Mooney:
Wow. Okay. So I mean, Pete Fry has stood up on that. You know, he's also voted with them a few times. So then, I guess my question is, you know, apart from being the kind of unified progressive candidate, what's he running on?

Katie Hyslop:
On what a lot of people are running on in terms of housing. So they are in favor of public housing on public land, tools for more affordable housing citywide. So like partnering with nonprofits and senior governments to deliver co-op, social, and supportive housing. One of their council candidates, Stephanie Smith, works with the Land Trust in Vancouver. So establishing more land trusts, establishing more land trusts and and housing co-ops is a big deal for them as well, and of course, like doing it as greenly as possible. Although I, I heard this from Pete actually earlier this year, which I think is is rather interesting. he is in favor of concrete buildings, which some people will insist is not green.

Harrison Mooney:
Concrete, famously green.

Katie Hyslop:
And I don't think it's the only thing they're in favor of, but yeah, that's that's been a bit of a bugaboo apparently.

Harrison Mooney:
We know about Pete Fry. We know about Ken Sim. Some people think it's a two-horse race, but maybe it's not. Who are the dark horses in this in this in this election?

Katie Hyslop:
So Kareem Allam with the Vancouver Liberals, which is a new party. He has not run for politics before, but he has a very long history of being campaign manager for a variety of federal and provincial and even municipal parties. So he even goes back to the Canadian Alliance Party. I don't know if you remember that.

Katie Hyslop:
So yes, he is responsible for you know Mayor Dianne Watts in Surrey, a successful campaign run there. Kevin Falcon, who was the leader of BC United previously, the BC Liberals, he Kareem Allam helped him win that race to become leader, and he is responsible for the successful ABC 2022 campaign.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. So anybody that's going to write him off needs to remember that this guy knows how to win elections.

Katie Hyslop:
He yes, he definitely knows how to win elections. He's he. I think he was the first person to declare that he was challenging Mayor Sim. and so he's been announcing policy platforms. I guess. Probably since July 2025, he's got a really good social media game. He's got several people who left ABC and on park board, on school board, who are now running for him.

And so the Vancouver Liberals vote Vancouver and Team for a Livable Vancouver like to talk about how they have people from all over the spectrum in terms of politics. So in the Vancouver Liberals' case, that includes people who have run as candidates, who have either been politicians or have run campaigns for the BC NDP, the BC Liberals, BC United, and the BC Conservatives

Harrison Mooney
Yeah. Yeah. Well, we only have four more hours left, so let's get into the other candidates.

Katie Hyslop:
Okay. So Colleen Hardwick and team had they came in third in 2022 for the mayor's race. Now Ken Sim won 50 per cent of the vote. Kennedy Stewart, who was the incumbent at the time, won about 30 per cent of the vote, and I believe Colleen won 10 per cent. So it's not massive. But she has said that she's since heard from many people who voted for ABC and regret not voting for her instead. And her big thing is basically undoing a lot of the residential planning in the city all the way back to like 2008, when Vision Vancouver came into power.

Harrison Mooney:
Like, what does that mean? Undoing? That's a lot of undoing.

Katie Hyslop:
It is a lot of undoing. So, a lot of the you know when we have like city plans about how the city will grow and develop in the future, basically those. So the the official development plan that we recently passed, she would undo that. Which can be, we do have to have an official development plan, but what is in it, she believes we can have more sway over. She's very much against developers and upzoning land.

Harrison Mooney:
What is upzoning?

Katie Hyslop:
So upzoning means if you have a single family unit or lot and you want to build an apartment building there instead, you have to upzone basically for how many people can live there. So if any of our listeners are familiar with Patrick Condon's pieces on the The Tyee, he and and Colleen Hardwick are birds of a feather in terms of they believe that the more that you upzone, you're increasing the cost of the land, and that's what drives up prices for housing in Vancouver. Not everybody agrees, but it's definitely a debate that's not settled.

Harrison Mooney:
All right. Well, is uh is this election gonna get dirty? Is is it gonna be a polarizing election? Um, you know how how how ugly are we expecting this this month to go?

Katie Hyslop:
I mean, it's already ugly online. The issues… and I guess at public hearings, it's pretty ugly as well. So the issues that seem to be the most divisive are housing, both in terms of like having housing, supportive housing for people who are in dire straits, or the fact that you know 80 per cent of Vancouver is zoned for single-family homes, and over half of the city's population are renters, so we we have a real imbalance of density in terms of the kind. And you know Vancouver's growth has slowed down in the past couple of years, but generally speaking, it's a very popular place to live. People are constantly coming here, and they need a place to live. So that's definitely controversial. And the other would be what is getting broadly termed public safety, but was really about drugs and mental health care in the city, and whether you know some people think involuntary care is the way to go, and other people point out that we don't have enough voluntary care to begin with. So even if you want help, it's really hard to get it

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, we didn't get our 100 nurses

Katie Hyslop:
Exactly.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay. Well, before I ask my award-winning final question, okay, is there anything I forgot to ask here? Have we have we properly informed our our listeners for this election?

Katie Hyslop:
Did you want to talk about school liaison officers?

Harrison Mooney:
Yes, I did want to talk about school liaison officers. What's going on with that?

Katie Hyslop:
So to give people a brief rundown, in 2021, the Vancouver School Board canceled the School Liaison Officer program, which saw Vancouver Police Department officers stationed one per high school and working with their feeder elementary schools. This program dates back to the 1970s. This cancellation was after a backlash to police violence and the disproportionate impacts on Black and Indigenous communities across Canada, and particularly in Vancouver, school board consultations found at the time found that half of Indigenous respondents and 60 per cent of Black respondents had negative perceptions of cops in schools. Some communities, particularly in South Vancouver, did not have this same negative relationship with police. They felt they were being ignored when the program was canceled, and that their kids were now unsafe in schools without police presence. So, ABC in 2022 ran on a campaign of bringing the program back, and when they won a majority on school board, they did do that. And so, ABC trustees made some comments that I thought revealed the divide in in the community pretty starkly when they voted to return the program. So, Preeti Faridkot, who is a current Vancouver School Board trustee and is a candidate with ABC to be to join the school board again, she said at the time, "I understand that police do not belong in schools, and then she added that neither do drugs and gangs,” which is why we have, which is why she was wanting to bring them back. And from ABC's Alfred Chien, who is also a current trustee and a current trustee candidate with ABC, said about the critics of people or the criticism of bringing police back, said that “The best thing to do is to educate them. The critics, police are their friends and not their enemy.”

Harrison Mooney:
Right, I'm not going to say anything about that.

Katie Hyslop:
Fair. Many of the people who pushed against the program previously, parents and community advocates, have since had their kids graduate out, or they were on the Vancouver Police Department's African Descent Advisory Committee, which disbanded over the fact that the police board failed to hold a vote on bringing back the SLO program.

Harrison Mooney:
Man, just speaking as a local black person, man, they really got us, huh?

Katie Hyslop:
As well, this past spring, the Vancouver School Board released finally released an internal review of the program that had been long promised. The new program, which was brought back in 2023, and that showed overwhelmingly neutral or positive reviews of the current program from students, teachers, and staff. That being said, most of the municipal parties running school board candidates have taken a stance in the election. So COPE, which is the openly socialist party—

Harrison Mooney:
I'm going to guess they said no cops in schools.

Katie Hyslop:
They they are running on funding mental health counselors in schools versus police in schools.

Harrison Mooney:
Right.

Katie Hyslop:
It's a tiny bit misleading because the Vancouver Police Department funds the the police and schools, not the school board. The Vancouver School Board gives them resources like offices, computers, parking space, but the police are the ones who are paying the bills for this program. The Greens are calling for evaluating school liaison officers and all police relationships with schools based on evidence, which no one has done yet, and that's what the BC Human Rights Commissioner has been calling for for all police and school programs in BC.

Harrison Mooney:
Is that a pause until we figure out what's going on? That's my favorite thing that Trump has brought to politics: is a pause until we figure out what's going on.

Katie Hyslop:
I don't think they're calling for. I didn't say a pause.

Harrison Mooney:
No pause. They're just going to figure out what's going on.

Katie Hyslop:
They're going to figure out what's going on. They also want to evaluate based on student safety, community input, and the school board's educational mandate. OneCity, whose current Vancouver School Board trustee Jennifer Reddy fought really hard against bringing back school liaison officers, she's not running again this year, and OneCity does not mention the school liaison officers in their in their platform. However, they do call for an independent, publicly reported organizational review of the Vancouver Police Department for accountability. TEAMfor Livable Vancouver are pro school liaison officer. Vancouver Liberals are pro school liaison officer, and so is Vote Vancouver.

Harrison Mooney:
Wow. Yeah, that was a. I feel like I could have just asked off the top, like, "Hey, can you give me one issue that shows exactly where everybody aligns on the political spectrum? And

Katie Hyslop:
That's pretty much it. Yeah.

Harrison Mooney:
Wow. Incredible. Okay. Well, I'm glad I asked about that. And now it's time for my award-winning question.

Katie Hyslop:
Okay.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, Katie, who are you going to vote for? And don't you dare tell me that your position as a trusted civic informer hinges on an ethical responsibility toward fair and balanced coverage that precludes you from disclosing your political affiliations. Because I'm sick of that shit.

Katie Hyslop:
I don't think I can make the mouth noise for crickets, but that's my answer.

Harrison Mooney:
Katie, thanks for being here.

Katie Hyslop:
You're welcome.

Harrison Mooney:

Katie Hyslop is a reporter here at The Tyee. And you can find their reporting on our website at The Tyee dot c a. Did you enjoy today’s episode? Let us know by sending an email or voice note to [email protected]

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If you want to advertise on this podcast, we have a team that wants to hear from you. You can email them at [email protected]. Today's episode was hosted by me, Harrison Mooney. It was produced by Isaac Phan Nay. And engineered by Bespoke Podcasts. Our music is by Bryan Binnema. Join us again in two weeks.