What the Next Byelection Will Reveal about the Local Left

Elections, it’s been said, beget elections, and last month’s provincial election in British Columbia is no exception. After winning an MLA seat in the riding of Vancouver-Little Mountain with the BC NDP, two-term Vancouver city councillor Christine Boyle is set to depart city hall in December, triggering a local byelection to replace her.

Boyle, the only candidate who ran with the 10-year-old progressive party OneCity to successfully secure a council seat, will officially resign on Dec. 12, OneCity co-chair Cara Ng told The Tyee.

“I'd be lying if I said that I wasn’t at least a little bit sad to see her go, because she has been such a significant voice on workers’ rights, Indigenous rights and climate justice on council,” Ng said. “She will be duly missed as an elected OneCity representative.”

In a statement released Oct. 29, Boyle explained that delaying her formal resignation until December will ensure that a vote for her vacant seat happens next spring, rather than over the holiday season.

Nobody wants an election at Christmas. On this, and perhaps only this, the remaining nine councillors, city hall staff and Mayor Ken Sim all seem to agree.

“This timeline was requested by city staff,” Boyle explained, “as it will allow staff the time needed to run a byelection and ensure that it doesn’t conflict with the busy city budget and holiday season.”

Whenever it’s held — on a Saturday, no less than 80 days from when a chief election officer is appointed, per the Vancouver Charter — this election is projected to cost around $2 million, money that comes from the city’s Election Reserve Fund.

This estimate accounts for inflation from the last civic byelection in 2017, when Vision Vancouver’s Geoff Meggs became then-premier John Horgan’s new chief of staff.

It cost the city $1.5 million, but everything is more expensive these days.

Low turnout, high stakes

Whatever the cost, it’s a big chunk of change for an election that doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Even if a progressive candidate succeeds Boyle, they won’t make a dent in Mayor Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver’s eight-seat supermajority.

“It's not going to really change the outcomes of council in any meaningful way,” said Green Party Coun. Pete Fry. “We’ve seen an increasingly... toxic, partisan environment where ABC really kind of entrenched around their party to the exclusion of all others, so it’s not exactly the most attractive offering.”

This might explain why one person I spoke to while writing this article asked if I wanted to run. Viable candidates seem to be in short supply.

Voters are sure to be, too. Turnout for the last two byelections was abysmal, with roughly 10 per cent of Vancouver’s electorate casting a ballot.

In 1992, the Non-Partisan Association’s Lynne Kennedy won with 11,573 votes. In the most recent 2017 byelection, NPA candidate Hector Bremner won with just 13,372 votes.

By comparison, the lowest vote-getter among those elected to council in the 2022 Vancouver municipal election was Pete Fry, with 37,270 votes. Bremner’s byelection totals would have placed him one spot below VOTE Socialist candidate Sean Orr, who came in 36th.

“But in a field of 79 candidates,” Orr noted, when reached by The Tyee.

Fifty-eight, actually. Either way, it was a lot, as the city’s left-of-centre coalition struggled, once again, to find a way to coalesce.

A record 10 parties ran candidates in 2022, a political fight cloud that hamstrung Vancouver progressives the same way it had five years earlier.

The case for a ‘unity’ candidate

“I ran in the 2017 byelection and experienced that first-hand,” recalled Fry. He ran for the Greens in that election, Judy Graves ran for OneCity, Jean Swanson ran as an independent and Diego Cardona ran for Vision. “And Hector Bremner walked up the middle. He got elected with, like, 23 per cent of the vote.”

Twenty-eight, actually. Either way, it wasn’t much, especially compared with the 66 per cent that went to the four left-wing candidates, any of whom could have won if they hadn’t all run and thus quartered the vote.

In other words, these one-off elections do matter. They may not be much of a draw, but they give us a glimpse of Vancouver’s political future.

They offer a chance to build name recognition — both Swanson and Fry were elected to council in 2018, the year after they both ran in a byelection — and they preview the tenor and trends of the next big election.

In the case of the 2025 Vancouver byelection, we’re sure to find out if progressives have learned from eight years of disunity.

‘They want to see people work together’

“I think, definitely, that progressives have to figure it out,” said Orr, adding that his party, VOTE Socialist, has had preliminary talks with COPE about collaborating.

“I think people want that,” he said. “I think the idea of having a... Vancouver-in-common kind of slate would resonate with people, and not see 100 people on the ballot, because people get confused. They want to see people work together.”

While Orr hasn’t ruled out a bid for Boyle’s seat, he didn’t seem keen on a one-year position that wouldn’t do much beyond building his brand.

“I don’t want to just run on name recognition,” he said. “I want to be part of a council that gets things done.”

What about OneCity and the Greens? Fry is one of two Green Party members on council, one fewer than last term. The dream of another three-councillor caucus, however, is one they may have to defer.

“We’ve had folks express interest to run with us, and our party is interested to run in the byelection,” said Fry. “We are also cognizant of the fact that OneCity is sort of keen to replace Christine with another OneCity. We want to be respectful of what that looks like, and really avoid a scenario where we’re unnecessarily splitting the vote.”

Ng confirmed that OneCity intends to run a candidate for council and that discussions with the other leftist parties are ongoing. The goal, Ng has said, is a unity candidate.

“These talks have been happening over the past few months,” she told The Tyee. “I’m pretty optimistic about it. I think people have been very friendly and open to the idea of collaboration.”

More clarity on process and potential candidates will come, said Ng, following OneCity’s next membership meeting on Nov. 21.

“We definitely don’t want to deliver or strengthen ABC’s supermajority by running multiple candidates on the left,” she said. “We are very keenly aware of that. [The 2017 byelection] was a good lesson to have, and that’s going to shape our approach to building unity on the left.”

“That is definitely not a scenario we ever want to revisit.”

Amid obvious signs and insider reports of turbulence within Ken Sim’s ABC party, a unified left wing would be highly auspicious.

Even with little to gain from a ninth seat, the Vancouver mayor has already said that his side is “definitely running someone,” potentially giving this city’s progressives an early opportunity to register dissent and build momentum.

“I think the byelection is a perfect opportunity for voters to make their voices heard and register that discontent towards ABC and all of the many harmful decisions they’ve made while on council, like decertifying Vancouver as a living wage employer, or attempting to suspend the work of the integrity commissioner,” said Ng.

ABC swept into power with massive vote totals in 2022. Their victory was a no-doubter. Should this byelection play out differently, it might be time to let a little doubt in.

“Oftentimes, byelections are kind of a protest vote on the government,” said Fry. “I would say ABC are doing a pretty good job of alienating and upsetting a lot of Vancouverites.”

Orr pointed out that Vancouver’s progressive wing carried the recent provincial election, handing 11 of 12 local ridings to David Eby’s BC NDP.

“I feel like people are pretty upset with the way things are going,” he said. “And we saw in the B.C. election that there was kind of a rejection of this populist rhetoric, and... Chip Wilson, who is also ABC’s financial backer, his appeals were ridiculed and rejected, ultimately, by Vancouver voters.”

Could this trend trickle down to municipal politics?

“I think we're gonna try, definitely, to tap into that. I think it bodes well for our chances of winning the seat,” said Ng. “I think those results tell us that the conditions are very right for Vancouver to elect a progressive to council.”

They may be, provided the left can get out of its way.

*Story updated on Nov. 15, 2024 at 3:40 p.m. to correct that Jean Swanson ran as an independent in Vancouver’s 2017 byelection, not for the Coalition of Progressive Electors.