Vancouver’s climate leadership re-secured

Seth KleinOct 20, 20262415ShareImage from the website of the Vancouver Green Party[A version of this piece was also published by Canada’s National Observer here.]

Good news friends. A couple weeks ago, I warned that Vancouver’s historic climate leadership hung in the balance in last weekend’s municipal election. Thankfully, that leadership is once again secure.

Last Saturday, voters across British Columbia elected their local mayors, municipal councils and school boards. With this many elections in play, there are always bound to be a mix of exciting wins and stinging losses. By and large, it was a rough night for incumbents of all political persuasions. A few terrible people were elected in some locales. On the other hand, a number of truly awful/racist people were tossed out, and we saw progressive council wins in Vancouver, Burnaby, the North Shore of the Lower Mainland, and in various communities on Vancouver Island (Victoria, Nanaimo, North Cowichan among others). I’m sure there were others but I don’t know enough about those local details.

But let me dig into the results I know best – my hometown of Vancouver. Here, we saw a sweeping change election. Mayor Ken Sim and his right-wing ABC majority were decisively sent packing (pollsters had predicted a tight race between Sim and the Green Party’s Pete Fry, but in fact it wasn’t remotely close).

Turnout was the highest we’ve seen in over ten years, rising from 36% four years ago to 43% last weekend (a very high result for a local election), with thirty-eight thousand more Vancouverites turning out to vote than the previous outing.

Pete Fry secured 48% of the popular vote and will now become the city’s first Green mayor (indeed, the first Green to serve as mayor in any big Canadian city). He managed to carry all four of his Green council candidates to victory along with him (as well as all the candidates they fielded for Park Board and School Board). Fry won, at least in part, because the mayoralty candidates of the city’s other two progressive parties, William Azaroff and Stephanie Allen, chose to stand down in early September, in a gracious effort to prevent left-wing vote-splitting – surely a lesson for other places and the future.

The right-wing ABC party, in contrast, managed to eke out only a single council seat.

COPE, the city’s historic left-wing party, despite withdrawing their mayoralty candidate, succeeded in electing all four of its council candidates (along with all the candidates they fielded for Park Board and School Board – a full sweep). It was their campaign (led by incumbent councillor Sean Orr) that skillfully captured the left-populist zeitgeist of the moment. Consequently, their candidates were among the top vote-getters, mirroring a dynamic we have seen unfolding in numerous municipal and Democratic primary elections in the US.

Rounding out the council chamber, OneCity (full disclosure: the progressive party with which I am a member) won one seat (incumbent Lucy Maloney). But notably, the party saw a huge jump in its vote numbers, despite being unable to increase its seat-count on council; even the lowest-ranking OneCity candidate, who was well back from winning a council seat, still secured ten thousand more votes than the party won four years ago. OneCity also went from one to three school board trustees.

All told, the Vancouver results are a huge win for progressives/Greens generally, and for left-populism specifically. And the left won despite having considerably less money to spend – the many defeated the money.

While Sim spent enormous sums on negative attack ads and fear-mongering, the progressive parties ran largely positive campaigns. In this election, the latter was rewarded.

With respect to the climate crisis, this win means Ken Sim’s multiple efforts to roll back Vancouver’s nation-leading climate policies are mercifully done. Vancouver’s prohibition on using fossil fuels for space and water heating in new buildings will be sustained, other Sim policy reversals will also be rescinded, and Vancouver can once again move forward with new climate policies and actions.

Of note, the platforms of the progressive parties now constituting a majority on council include COPE’s pledge to build walkable neighbourhoods and invest in active transport and transit, among other climate priorities at home, while engaging internationally on climate. OneCity, meanwhile, proposed a handful of ambitious energy programs including topping up solar and battery incentives, low-income retrofits and expanding district energy. Vancouverites can expect some, or hopefully most, of those ideas to become reality.

I also expect this new council will take considerably more action with respect to other emergencies we confront – the poison drug crisis and homelessness – and will quickly dispense with the regressive approach of the Sim regime.

Nothing in politics is ever fixed. We all go through some dark periods. But this week, anyway, I’m choosing to see my city resume its journey on the slow arc towards justice.

(Incidentally, in my family election pool, I only got five correct predictions, the same as my 12-year-old son; politics is so hard to foretell.)

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Ontario NDP makes major Youth Climate Corps pledgeLast week, it was great to see the Ontario NDP go all-in for the Youth Climate Corps (and another big win for the national YCC campaign). The Ontario NDP were joined at a news conference by representatives from the Ontario Federation of Labour and the national YCC campaign, at which they called for funding to create 10,000 green jobs for youth per year.

MPP Jessica Bell plans to propose the plan in the legislature when it resumes sitting, with guiding principles and policies that closely align with those called for by the YCC campaign.

For more, check out “Ontario NDP target youth unemployment with climate jobs pitch” in the National Observer.

Last week, Clean Energy Canada released a poll (commissioned from Abacus Data) showing, among other things, that 60% of those surveyed think the government should prioritize the construction of new renewables like wind and solar with battery storage, compared to just 17% who think natural gas should be the priority and 13% who think it should be nuclear.

Moreover, more than three-quarters support the construction of renewable power within their communities, with support rising further if local benefits are provided (whereas who wants and oil or gas well or nuclear plant in their back yard?).

You can find all the hopeful results here.

And share this good news on Bluesky here.

Kudos to Greenpeace Canada for their new report – Manufacturing Petro Populism – which brings to light the murky figures muddying our conversations about energy and shilling for Big Oil. (Funnily enough, this secret network had password-protected their homepage, but had neglected to do the same for all the other pages, which found their way to Greenpeace 😂.)

Independent journalist Rachel Gilmore has a great video and column summarizing the report on her Substack here.

The Narwhal also has a great summary piece about the report here.

And if you want to amplify my Bluesky post, you can find it here.

Don’t forget, I’m always open to speaking requests. If your organization is interested in booking me for a forthcoming event, and you want to read what others have said about my past talks, please visit my webpage “Book Seth as a Speaker” here.

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