The Greening of Vancouver City Hall

Vancouver Green Party mayoral candidate Pete Fry has won with a commanding lead over incumbent ABC mayor Ken Sim.

While final results are still rolling in at time of writing, the rest of city council is also looking dramatically different, with four COPE councillors, one OneCity, and four Green councillors currently in the top 10 spots. Mike Klassen was the sole ABC candidate set to win re-election.

“Thank you for believing in the positive message and putting your trust in me and my team here,” Fry said, motioning to the Green candidates gathered behind him at the podium.

“We’re not going to let you down. We love the city, and we’re here to work for the city, to fight for the city.”

Sim had taken to the stage just a little while earlier to give his concession speech.

“Obviously, we hoped for a different result, but tonight the people of Vancouver — they have made their decision, and while it isn’t the decision we wanted, it’s one that we really do have to respect, and that’s democracy,” Sim said.

“I do want to congratulate our next mayor, Pete Fry.”

In a scrum with reporters following his speech, Sim said he was proud of his work in Chinatown, and he said he believed council’s actions on the Downtown Eastside — which included a controversial decampment in 2023 and a policing push called “Task Force Barrage” — had improved the area. Sim said he was also proud of being a role model. He was the first Chinese Canadian mayor of a major Canadian city.

“We absolutely love this city, and so of course we want Pete to succeed,” Sim said. “The goal was never to be a mayor. The goal was to have an incredible city, and I’m going to support Pete in anything he needs from us.”

No fewer than seven parties ran in opposition to Sim and his ABC party. Centrist parties Vancouver Liberals (with Kareem Allam as mayoral candidate), Vote Vancouver (with Rebecca Bligh for mayor), and a new left-wing party called Bright Future (running Muhammad Ahmad for mayor) also made their case to voters.

But the Greens’ rosy vision for the future has won out.

Checking in at Green Party HQ

Less than a minute after CBC called it for Fry, Vancouver’s first Green mayor emerged from the back room where party staff had gathered, to an uproarious reception from the supporters.

Making his way through a crowd of people excited to hug, take selfies with and high five the new mayor, Fry and fellow Green candidates grouped together at the front of the room for the speech.

“I just got a call from Ken Sim,” Fry said to cheers, solidifying his win with a concession from the incumbent mayor.

“And Ken was very gracious in offering his assistance to make sure I steward the city well. And I really appreciate that offer and the help with the transition.”

Fry is now the first Green mayor in Vancouver history, which he admitted was “a heavy role to play.”

“I am representing a lot of Green ideals. But at the same time, the Green party has always been a values-based party, it’s not as much of a partisan policy party,” he said.

“The values that we bring are about respect for the earth, participatory democracy, working together, non-violence, being supportive, being nice. And I think that’s really where we can shine, and I’m excited by that.”

JB the First Lady takes a selfie with Pete Fry, who milled about the Vancouver Green Party talking with media, candidates, volunteers and supporters as results rolled in.
Photo for The Tyee by Kayla Isomura.

All four Green council candidates, Annette Reilly, Camil Dumont, Stephanie Smith and Bridget Burns, are set to win their seats on council.

Reilly, who ran unsuccessfully in the April 2025 byelection, says the difference this election was “the Green wave.”

“We’ve got a real momentum within the party right now, and I think people really wanted a change. The fact that we didn’t want a majority meant that we wanted to work across party lines,” she said, adding her goal on council is to make the city safer for every resident.

“We need to make sure that our vulnerable populations are taken care of. And if we can ensure safety for everyone during these four years, or at the very least build a system to ensure that over the next decade, that will be a success.”

Fry now presides over a council made up of four different political parties. While the previous term’s council had a similar number of parties since the April 2025 byelection, ABC still had a comfortable majority with six councillors.

Now city council has a slight COPE majority, with both OneCity and ABC holding single seats. Comparisons to city council under former mayor Kennedy Stewart may be inevitable. But Fry, who sat on that council, says it was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic but had successes all the same.

“We went from quite literally having half a dozen speakers to council items, to having hundreds because we opened up council meetings to video and audio, and folks didn’t have to attend at city hall. It changed the entire way we did business,” he said, adding his priority now was to work with people who can “get stuff done for Vancouverites.”

“I’ve worked with hundreds of councillors and mayors around British Columbia. They can function just fine without a party system at all. And the lack of partisan politics doesn’t hinder their ability to get things done.”

On the park board, incumbent Green commissioner Tom Digby led the other six elected commissioners with the most votes, a lead of over 9,000 at reporting time. Newcomers Spencer Van Vloten and Breanne Smart were also elected alongside COPE’s four candidates.

Both school board candidates Alisha Masongsong and Julie Strilesky were also elected to the nine trustee school board, keeping the two Green seats vacated by long-time trustees Lois Chan-Pedley and Janet Fraser.

A historic night for COPE

The Coalition of Progressive Electors, or COPE, came into the election with a goal: ensuring Ken Sim is not re-elected as mayor.

Vancouver voters granted that wish. And then some. All 12 candidates that COPE ran were leading their races, with incumbent councillor Sean Orr topping the council race by several thousand votes as of midnight.

“I think a lot of people see themselves in COPE,” Orr told The Tyee as election results started coming in. “That’s a difficult thing sometimes but it’s also a magical thing.”

The party knocked on 10,000 doors today and could sense something special was in the works, according to campaign director Shawn Vulliez. “Ken Sim has been driving this city into the ground,” he said, citing his governance style and budget cuts.

COPE supporters react as live results started coming in.
Photo for The Tyee by Josh Kozelj.

COPE’s success dates back to the April 2025 byelection, which saw Orr elected to council, he added.

The party noted some discontent with ABC Vancouver and vied to be “a voice of that discontent,” Vulliez said. “We knew that other people were feeling the way we were feeling about the direction of our city,” he said, adding that other people didn’t approve of a mayor who “pulls back on climate change, inequality… We wanted to be the voice to say what people were thinking.”

Hundreds of people packed the Vancouver Japanese Language School in the Downtown Eastside and cheered as results flooded in. By the end of the night, it was a full-on party.

“I made losing look good,” said Stephanie Allen, COPE mayoral candidate who dropped out of the race in September to prevent vote-splitting with OneCity and the Green Party of Vancouver, once results started coming in.

“What we did was demonstrate that the power is with the people.”

COPE had made pins, shirts and signs with the slogan “Evict Ken Sim” in the weeks leading up to voting day. And that message was on full display at the party headquarters.

COPE made pins, shirts and signs with the slogan ‘Evict Ken Sim’ in the weeks leading up to voting day.
Photo for The Tyee by Josh Kozelj.

COPE’s platform focused on reversing some of the decisions made during Sim’s tenure.

Dubbed “The People’s Audit,” the measures included increasing the empty homes tax to nine per cent, reviewing AI data use policies and finding out “why major decisions against public interest were made at the city,” among other promises.

One City re-elects Lucy Maloney

After results started trickling in after 9 p.m., it was a roller-coaster at the OneCity election night party hosted at The Pleasant.

OneCity managed to snag one city council seat last election. They repeated that result, with Lucy Maloney winning re-election.

“I’m excited to continue the work that we started after the byelection with my colleagues from COPE and the Greens to make Vancouver more affordable, safer, and more vibrant,” Maloney said in her address to the party. “And it’s really great news that ABC will not be making the decisions.”

Maloney ran for re-election alongside council hopefuls Iona Bonamis, Frances Bula, Jarrett Hagglund and Caitlin Stockwell, but was the only one to win.

OneCity ran on a platform that promised safer streets, acquiring affordable rental buildings, as well as an economic plan that promised to invest in Vancouver businesses, including legalizing corner stores.

As of 11:30 p.m., OneCity’s showing was significantly better for their slate of school trustees. Three candidates, Steve Cardwell, Rory Brown, and Krista Sigurdson, were set to be elected.

Party attendee Anika Verveckin told The Tyee she’d met Sigurdson because their children go to school together. She said that Sigurdson won her over by advocating for students while serving the Parent Advisory Council in the past.

“I’m really excited to hear that she’s going to be able to do that for students across Vancouver because we need motivated people,” said Verveckin.

Dramatic losses for ABC

ABC lost both the mayoral seat and most candidate seats, with councillor Mike Klassen the sole ABC candidate set to win election as of the end of the night.

During the campaign, ABC took credit for crime rates falling, but said more work needed to be done to quell “social disorder” on city streets caused by mental health and addiction. ABC councillors opposed Vancouver Coastal Health’s plan to open a new overdose prevention site in Yaletown, and the provincial government announced the plan would no longer go ahead in August.

Vancouver mayor Ken Sim speaks with Global News reporter Alissa Thibault on election night, Oct. 17, 2026.
Photo for The Tyee by Jen St. Denis.

ABC ran on a public safety campaign, focusing on their own record funding of police, while putting a pause on new supportive housing developments — with a few exceptions — and lobbying against the opening of overdose prevention sites planned by the local health authority.

Results for the two plebiscite questions ABC councillors and Sim voted in favour of adding to the election, at a cost of $500,000, will be released on Oct. 31. ABC has claimed a “yes” majority would provide the city a mandate to crack down harder on public illicit drug use, and push the province to open involuntary care at the St. Pauls’ hospital site in the city’s densely populated West End residential neighbourhood.

Most of the parties running in opposition to Sim were in favour of lifting the ban on new supportive housing, and all were opposed to the plebiscite.