Vancouver’s new mayor faces tough test
Divided council has no clear majority and opposing interests
VANCOUVER— Former federal New Democrat MP Kennedy Stewart is Vancouver’s next mayor, defeating a massive slate of candidates and new political parties in the city while running as an independent.
Stewart, the first independent mayor in the city in three decades, beat out the Non-Partisan Association’s Ken Sim by fewer than1,000 votes. As of late Sunday, Sim had refused to concede the race.
In order for the NPA to call for a judicial recount, they must provide proof something went wrong in the voting process, such as a tampered ballot box, according to Mario Canseco, president of polling company Research Co. The process of recounting is not the same provincially as it is municipally, he added.
And the evidence must be enough to compel a judge to call for a recount, Canseco told StarMetro on Sunday.
Stewart replaces Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson, who announced in January he would not seek re-election as mayor.
Experts say Stewart will face an uphill battle to bring together a sharply “divided” city council.
Vancouver is one of just a few Canadian cities that runs on a party system.
Stewart is now in charge of a 10-person council with no clear party majority and opposing interests. It is made up of five centre-right NPA members, three Greens and one member each from leftleaning COPE and OneCity.
Vision Vancouver, which held a10-year grip on city council, won no seats.
A divided council will be a challenge, according to Hamish Telford, political science professor at the University of Fraser Valley.
“There’s going to be enormous pressure for them to succeed, and a lot of that onus will fall to Kennedy Stewart because he took the plunge as an independent,” he explained in a phone interview.
“Even if you had like-minded bodies, a lot of it will come down to personalities. And that we won’t know for some time.”
Stewart is a former NDP Burnaby South MP who vacated his seat to run as an independent in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, the Green Party of Vancouver topped the polls in all three arenas of city councillors, school trustees and park board commissioners.
The so-called “Green wave” — given the party took the greatest number of council seats in their history — points to their growing political “toehold” across the country, Telford added. He noted they have “always stressed the importance of co-operation.”
Still, each side of the political spectrum must work together, Telford added.
“It can be very detrimental if we have an inefficient council that can’t legislate,” he said.
But municipal parties aren’t “quite as cohesive” as they are at provincial and federal levels, he said, noting party discipline is not as rigorously enforced.
Telford was surprised to see the resurgence of the centre-right NPA, who have not seen this many councillors reach City Hall since 2005, when Sam Sullivan took the mayor’s chair.
Notably, Mike Harcourt was Vancouver’s last independent mayor, elected in 1980.