The seats became vacant when OneCity’s Christine Boyle was elected as an NDP MLA and Green Adriane Carr resigned last week
The City of Vancouver has announced that a byelection will be held on April 5 to fill vacancies left by the resignations of councillors Adriane Carr and Christine Boyle.
Carr, a Green and Vancouver’s longest-serving city councillor, resigned last week. OneCity councillor Christine Boyle resigned last fall when she was elected the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Little Mountain.
Vancouver council has named city clerk Katrina Leckovic as the chief election officer.
The resignations leave ABC Vancouver with an even stronger stranglehold on council, having won all but three of 11 seats in the 2022 municipal elections. The only remaining non-ABC councillor is Carr’s fellow Green, Pete Fry.
Mayor Ken Sim declined to answer last week when asked if ABC would run two candidates in the byelection, saying only that, “Our goal is to make sure that we have amazing individuals, who are pragmatic, to be in that chamber and make the best decisions possible for the residents of the City of Vancouver.”
Carr’s Green party and Boyle’s OneCity have vowed to run a single candidate each to avoid splitting the left-leaning vote against the more right-leaning ABC Vancouver.
However, COPE, the city’s oldest left-leaning party that was shut out in the ’22 election, has said it will run at least one candidate. TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, a new party in that election, also plans to name two candidates. Former mayor Kennedy Stewart’s Vision Vancouver, a centre-left party that ran the city from 2008 to 2018, has not declared its intentions.
Eligible voters have three options in the upcoming byelection. Advance voting will be held on March 26 and April 1 at Vancouver City Hall. On voting day, Saturday, April 5, polls will be open at city hall and 24 community centres. Or voters can make their choice by mail by requesting a voting package online or by phoning 311 after March 3.
Voters are eligible if they are at least 18 years old on April 5, 2025, are Canadian citizens, have lived in B.C. for at least six months before registration day, and have lived in or own property in Vancouver for at least 30 days before registering to vote.
With files from Dan Fumano