COPE, One-City, secure council seats in Vancouver’s municipal byelection

VANCOUVER — Vancouver’s left-of-centre parties have secured two council seats in the municipal byelection, filling the space vacated by the Green party’s Adriane Carr and OneCity’s Christine Boyle.

All 27 polls reported after midnight that COPE represented by Sean Orr received 34,448 votes and Lucy Maloney of OneCity obtained 33,732.

The vote was anticipated to be a litmus test for Mayor Ken Sim’s ABC party, which swept to power in 2022 with all its candidates for council, park board and school board elected.

The departure of Carr and Boyle — who left after being elected to B.C.’s provincial Legislature — leaves only the Green party’s Pete Fry and former ABC member Rebecca Bligh serving who aren’t ABC councillors in Vancouver.

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, which ran two candidates for city council in the byelection, says in a statement on Saturday that it’s demanding the Vancouver Election Office increase staffing after multiple reports of voters waiting up to one and a half hours at several polling locations.

TEAM spokesperson Sal Robinson says it’s outrageous to ask voters to wait an hour or more to exercise their democratic right to vote and they are gathering evidence to file an official complaint regarding the lack of adequate staffing and resources for this byelection.

The City of Vancouver’s election office says it “appreciates Vancouverites’ commitment to participating in the byelection and the patience they are demonstrating when voting.”

The office says it modelled this byelection off data from the past two byelections, and this byelection has had higher voter turnout so far.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2025.

The Canadian Press