Vancouver Residents, Pundits Offer Diverse Views on Mayor-Elect Ken Sim’s Landslide Victory

A person's belongings are placed on the street to be moved to storage after his tent was cleared from the sidewalk at a sprawling homeless encampment on East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on Aug. 9, 2022. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

When Ken Sim competed with Kennedy Stewart in Vancouver’s municipal elections in 2018, he lost to Stewart by fewer than 1,000 votes. When the two vied for the same position of Vancouver mayor on Oct. 15, voters sent Sim and his ABC Vancouver party to a landslide victory, a development some are seeing as a rejection of recent progressive policies.

Sim beat Stewart by more than 35,000 votes, and still would have won if all other mayoral candidate votes were combined. His party also won every city councillor and school trustee seat its candidates ran for.

However, despite the colossal victory and a convincing statement from the electorate, opinions are divided on what led to ABC Vancouver’s dominance.

Vote for Sim or Vote Against Stewart?

Vancouver resident Zofia Kwiecien said Stewart’s unwillingness to address the growing homeless situation and the associated crime were the leading factors for the sharp turn in voting.

There have been increasing cases of violent crime in Vancouver and other parts of southwest B.C. Most recently, on Oct. 18, an RCMP mental health and homeless outreach officer was stabbed to death at a homeless campsite in Burnaby. In the first nine months of this year, Vancouver saw a 6.7 percent increase in violent crime compared to the same period last year, according to the Vancouver Police Department’s latest public safety indicators report.

“People are sick of this,” Kwiecien told The Epoch Times. “It’s just a disaster, a complete disaster. People just had enough, which is saying quite a bit for Vancouver because you know how woke it is here,” she said, adding, “Nobody voted for Ken Sim. Everybody voted against Kennedy Stewart.”

Yet former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan, CEO of the non-profit Global Civic Policy Society, believes Sim deserves much of the credit.

Vancouver mayoral candidate Ken Sim speaks during a town hall in Vancouver on Sept. 7, 2022. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

“He worked hard for years. He worked on it for four years, mostly by himself,” Sullivan said. “I remember talking to him at one point about a year ago, and he said he had shaken 22,000 hands. That’s the kind of dogged persistence he showed and had committed to running. So I’m not sure if it [the election results] had much to do with Kennedy Stewart and more to do with Ken Sim.”

Author and Vancouver resident Ray McGinness, who didn’t vote for either Sim or Stewart, notes the various issues the city continues to grapple with, including growing addiction and homeless problems, frequent stabbings, and rising crime, as well as increasing property taxes.

“If there’s a game plan, it doesn’t seem to be working. It seems that something is spiralling out of control and that whatever is going into spearheading the response, that response from city hall doesn’t seem to be working either,” McGinness said.

Add the gridlock in and out of the city, high housing costs, and two years of COVID mandates, and “all of that kind of ends up being part of a recipe of a stew that’s just been cooking for too long. And people don’t find it very appetizing,” he said.

Election

According to Sanjay Jeram, a senior lecturer in political science at Simon Fraser University in nearby Burnaby, Sim had fewer ideological competitors than Stewart.

“That was sort of an issue, even in the last election, as to why Kennedy Stewart barely beat Ken Sim. That was because the left was divided,” he said.

Mario Canseco, president and founder of Research Co., a public opinion and data analysis company, also says vote splitting worked against Stewart.

“Your leftist vote is sort of going in all directions, and I think that was the problem,” Canseco said, noting that Vancouver is ”a centre-left town.”

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart speaks during a press conference in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, on July 28, 2021. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

“There was also this expectation that the NDP machinery provincially would be behind Kennedy Stewart because he had some high-profile endorsements from cabinet ministers, and that was going to sort of help him get closer to Sim at the end. It ended up not happening,” he added.

‘The Status Quo Is Not Working’

The election result didn’t surprise David Leis, vice-president of engagement and development with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. From his perspective, Vancouver has struggled to maintain a sense of affordability for residents, and its identity became interwoven with progressive policies that suffocated its growth.

“You had a weak incumbent whose brand was already tarnished,” Leis said.

“There’s a malaise and recognition that’s happening in different public opinion polls that showed us that people are very concerned about the health and vitality of not just Vancouver, but the Lower Mainland. And that is illustrated through lack of affordability and housing, which is atrocious and has massive impacts on the ability of the community to function.”

Leis says there’s an increased realization that “things are not working from a public policy point of view” in Vancouver, including the allocation of large amounts of funds into “harm reduction and poverty initiatives” that don’t show results.

“It’s a recognition that the status quo is not working, and to pursue that status quo and the dead-end policies is a recipe for disaster. So it’s a healthy sign of democracy when people are looking for alternatives,” he said.