New Vancouver mayor
Stewart is city’s first independent to claim the position in more than three decades
Kennedy Stewart started his day the same way he begins every Sunday. But when he made his weekly phone call to his mother in Nova Scotia, this Sunday was his first as mayor-elect of Vancouver.
“We have the same kind of moral sense, that’s where I got it from,” Stewart said. “She gives me lots of great advice, that’s why the Sunday calls are more for me than her, that’s for sure.”
Stewart’s mother, Cathy, was proud, he said, but she “wishes my elections were called a little earlier.”
Indeed, when Stewart, the former NDP MP for Burnaby South, won Saturday’s election, the race came down to the wire with the final polling stations not reporting results until well past midnight. That meant it was almost 5 a.m. in rural Nova Scotia, where his mother was still awake waiting on the results. By the wee hours of Sunday morning, Stewart had finally bested the Non-Partisan Association’s Ken Sim with whom he’d been neck-and-neck all evening, to become Vancouver’s first successful independent mayor in more than three decades.
On Sunday, Stewart was replying to some of the congratulatory messages he’s received from across the country, including outgoing three-term Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, with whom Stewart will meet this week to discuss the transition, and federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who’s now trying to take Stewart’s old job, by running for his seat in the federal byelection to replace him.
Robertson’s party, Vision Vancouver, enjoyed a majority on council for the entire decade of his mayoralty. But unlike his predecessor, Stewart will preside over a mixed council where no party has a majority.
Saturday’s results leave the city’s new 10-member council evenly split between five councillors from the centre-right NPA on one side, and on the other, five councillors representing a trio of left-leaning parties (three Greens and one apiece from COPE and OneCity). The NPA’s five successful councillors include Melissa De Genova, the party’s only incumbent seeking re-election, Colleen Hardwick, Lisa Dominato, Rebecca Bligh and Sarah Kirby-Yung. The Greens elected Adriane Carr, the top vote-winner and only other returning councillor, Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, while Jean Swanson won with COPE and Christine Boyle becomes the first councillor ever elected with OneCity.
That means if all the left-leaning councillors are aligned with Stewart on a particular issue or vote (assuming everyone is in attendance), they’ll have the slimmest of majorities even if the NPA councillors vote in a bloc against them.
On some issues, Stewart is likely to have the support of the left side of his council, like, for example, his pledge to increase the empty homes tax, a measure brought in by the last Vision-majority council and the first of its kind in Canada. Sim has opposed the tax, but Stewart wants to triple it.
The Greens indicated they were open to increasing the tax, pending a review of its first year, and both OneCity and COPE support boosting it.
But Stewart may find less support on council for other ideas he campaigned on, such as his call to change the plan for the Broadway Subway to Arbutus Street. Stewart wants the subway to go all the way west to the University of B.C., but members of the NPA, the Greens and COPE all expressed a reticence to change an established plan that already has funding commitments worth billions from the provincial and federal governments.
But Stewart said that even if he doesn’t find a lot of support from his colleagues on council for changing the subway plan, he believes he may find a more unlikely source on the other side of the Fraser River.
“That’s something I can do on my own, to start talking with Ottawa, and interestingly, my best ally on that may be Mayor Doug McCallum from Surrey, because he had a resounding victory there, and his whole agenda was replacing LRT with SkyTrain,” Stewart said.
So building consensus on council, issue by issue, will be crucial.
“I see myself as one of 11,” Stewart said. “I don’t see myself as one plus 10.”
Stewart said he wants to get some wins early, by tailoring his agenda to start with items where he thinks he’s more likely to garner universal support. As one example, Stewart pointed to the first pledge in his plan for his first 100 days in office: clearing the permitting backlog in the planning department, by hiring more staff and changing processes, with a special focus on approving rental housing.
“That’s really how I’m looking down my shopping list and saying: ‘What should I put first?’ And maybe leave the tough things that we don’t agree on, or there’s not an initial agreement on, for a little later. Just until we get to know each other.”
Stewart and his new council colleagues will be sworn in Nov. 5, just a few days before his 52nd birthday.
On Sunday, he was still adjusting to his new life. Stewart said after he woke up that “I just kind of got up and looked out my window at the city and thought : ‘Oh jeez. I’m responsible for this now.’ ”