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.
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.“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.”
“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.
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.”
‘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.
