Vancouver’s mayor-elect Pete Fry will be presiding over a council where no party has a majority. Fry’s Green Party secured four seats, as did COPE. OneCity secured a single seat as did outgoing mayor Ken Sim’s ABC party. The mixed council comes after the Greens, COPE and OneCity struck a pre-election deal to cap the number of left-of-centre candidates on the ballot in order to increase the odds of defeating Ken Sim and his ABC party. For the past four years, ABC had a majority on council and voted along party lines. Fry, on election night, said he looks forward to working with a mixed council. “I think that by creating a culture of respect, where all the councillors are getting respect and being allowed to shine in their areas of proficiency, we can work together,” he said. “I want us to put our partisan politics aside and work as a collective council.” The Greens four council seats will be held by Annette Reilly, Stephanie Smith, Camil Dumont, and Bridget Burns. COPE’s Sean Orr received the highest number of votes of any council candidate, with 83,038—more than 15,000 more votes than Sim. Almost immediately after Orr first won his seat in last year’s byelection, Sim held a news conference denouncing his not-yet-sworn-in council colleague as hateful and antisemitic. A code of conduct investigation by the city’s integrity commissioner found Sim had misused the influence of his office and “objectively harassed” Orr by holding the news conference. Sim also claimed, while speaking to Chinese-language media, that Orr distributed illicit drugs on Christmas Day—prompting a defamation suit that is currently before the courts. When the next council is sworn in, Orr will no longer be the lone representative of his party. He will be joined by Chloe Leslie, Devyani Singh and Solomon Yi-Kieran. OneCity will be sending incumbent Lucy Maloney back to the council chamber. ABC’s Mike Klassen was re-elected to serve on council and is the only candidate from that party to be elected to municipal office this time around. The park board will be made up of three Green Party commissioners and four from COPE. The school board will have four COPE trustees, three from OneCity and two from the Green Party.
