Fry says he’ll focus Vancouver city hall on results, not “partisan tribalism,” after Nov. 2 swearing-in

The Story

Mayor-elect Pete Fry says he wants to build a different culture at Vancouver city hall, aiming for a workplace that is “less about partisan tribalism” as he begins his four-year term.

Speaking early Sunday at the Slate event centre, Fry said his job No. 1 will be “sitting down with all the councillors and talking about what their objectives are, and how they want to function and what we can do together.” With seven newly elected councillors being rookies, he acknowledged there will be a learning curve, but said it presents an opportunity for a fresh approach to governing. Fry also said that while politics matters during elections, “for the rest of the four years, we can actually focus on just getting results for the city of Vancouver.”

Fry, the Green Party leader, will join the new council after Bridget Burns, Camil Dumont, Stephanie Smith and Annette Reilly take their seats from the Greens. COPE will be represented by Sean Orr, re-elected, along with newcomers Chloe Leslie, Devyani Singh and Solomon Yi-Kieran. OneCity Vancouver’s Lucy Maloney was also re-elected, while outgoing mayor Ken Sim’s ABC Vancouver party will have only one councillor returned: Mike Klassen.

The April deal among the Greens, COPE and OneCity called for each side to field no more than five candidates, and the campaigns of Stephanie Allen and William Azaroff were folded as part of that arrangement, leaving Fry as the candidate for the left-of-centre vote. Fry finished the election with 98,494 votes to Sim’s 67,467, based on the City of Vancouver’s unofficial results.

Reilly, who was second in the council race with 78,476 votes, said she was “honoured” to be re-elected and described her campaign as focused on being authentic. She also said Fry’s mayoral run and his work as an opposition councillor over the past term helped boost the Green team. Orr, who topped the council polls, said he expects to take on a greater leadership role in the early months, including helping his COPE colleagues adjust to the inner workings of city hall while also making space for Klassen given his four years of experience.

Among the priorities cited by the incoming team is reversing ABC’s temporary pause on supportive housing. Fry and the incoming councillors will also face early decisions that include reinstating the ban on natural gas for new builds, recertifying the City of Vancouver as a living wage employer and revisiting the creation of a bike lane on Broadway. Maloney said reversing the pause and other campaign commitments will be central, and she warned against an outlook for a large property tax increase, arguing instead for a “more predictable, reasonable, modest” rise. Another early test will come in December when the next budget has to be finalized.

In park board voting, the Greens’ Tom Digby topped the polls, joined by Breanne Smart and Spencer Van Vloten. COPE elected T’uyt’t’tanant Cease Wyss, Tamiko Suzuki, Jamie Han and Sacia Burton. The plebiscite results related to public drug use and involuntary mental health care are expected to be released Oct. 21, with the incoming councillors, with the exception of Klassen, having criticized the plebiscite as non-binding and costing more than $400,000. Newly elected school board members include Derrick O’Keefe, Gwen Giesbrecht, Melanie Cheng and Suzie Mah, who was re-elected, along with commissioners-elect Steve Cardwell, Rory Brown and Krista Sigurdson from OneCity.