Vancouver mayor to reflect on resident satisfaction following party's byelection defeats
Mayor stands behind ABC candidates who did not do well in byelection
Mayor Ken Sim says Vancouver's ABC party will be reflecting on the results of last weekend's byelection in which the party received only a fraction of votes cast — despite its massive success in the 2022 election.
Sim's comments followed a news conference for an unrelated matter Monday afternoon, less than two days after two new councillors were elected.
"Regardless if it's a byelection or not ... the reality is we listen to the residents of Vancouver every single day," Sim said. "There are enough of them that said they're not necessarily happy with everything that's going on.
"We're going to take a really hard look at ourselves."
Once the new councillors are sworn in, Vancouver city council will be made up of six ABC councillors and Sim, former ABC-member-turned-Independent Rebecca Bligh, the Green Party's Pete Fry, Sean Orr of COPE and OneCity's Lucy Maloney.
Orr won his seat with a whopping 34,448 votes, while Maloney received 33,732. A total of 67,962 ballots were cast.
Behind them were candidates from TEAM and the Greens. ABC's Jaime Stein and Ralph Kaisers came in last among candidates attached to municipal parties, with 9,267 and 8,915 votes, respectively.
Maloney, an environmental lawyer and transportation activist, said voters sent a message to the party in power.
"I think that ABC have lost touch with what ordinary Vancouverites are concerned about," she said, pointing to housing and affordability as the top priority for residents.
Orr, a housing activist, landscaper and dishwasher said politics in the U.S. may have influenced voters in Vancouver.
"People are very upset," he said. "People are scared, and people are starting to kind of connect the dots with what's going on down south. You're seeing what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing there. They're kind of seeing how the rich buy their way into office."
While he had yet to meet with Orr and Maloney, Sim publicly welcomed the pair to council and said he intended to meet with them Monday afternoon.
Sim stands behind candidate choice
Kaisers, a longtime police officer and head of the Vancouver Police Department's union, faced some controversy during the campaign, including allegations that union officials instructed officers involved in the 2015 death of Myles Gray not to take notes about the incident.
Gray, 33, died in a wooded backyard in Burnaby, B.C., after an encounter with seven police officers in 2015.
A public judicial hearing into Gray's death is set for Jan. 19, 2026, which will, in part, look into union officials' actions. No officers have ever been criminally charged in relation to Gray's death.
As reported by the Globe and Mail, Kaisers, on leave from his union position during the campaign, used personal email addresses of union members to ask for their support. He later apologized, calling the emails "a mistake," according to the newspaper.
Sim said both candidates were screened ahead of the campaign, and said Monday he has no regrets in who the party chose to run in the byelection.
"I'm proud of the decision," he said. "I thought those two individuals were of high character and quality and they would have served the residents of Vancouver well."
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With files from The Early Edition