Progressive Sweep Reshapes Vancouver’s Civic Landscape
In a decisive shift for local governance, left-wing and progressive parties secured every available seat on both the Vancouver Park Board and the Vancouver School Board during the civic election held on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. The results, which extend to preliminary City of Vancouver data as of 2:30 a.m. Sunday with all 149 voting places reporting, signal a complete turnover in the composition of these key municipal bodies.
COPE and the Green Party captured all seven positions on the Park Board, while COPE, the Greens, and OneCity Vancouver jointly won all nine seats on the School Board. This outcome effectively shut out Ken Sim’s centre-right ABC Vancouver party from both institutions, marking a significant defeat for the previously dominant political force in the city.
Park Board Results Detail Vote Counts
The Park Board race saw Green candidate Tom Digby finish first with 78,751 votes. Fellow Green candidate Spencer Van Vloten followed with 65,005 votes. COPE’s T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss placed third in the contest with 64,192 votes.
COPE’s Tamiko Suzuki received 63,105 votes, while Green candidate Breanne Smart garnered 62,420 votes. COPE’s Jamie Han secured 61,093 votes. The seventh and final Park Board seat was claimed by COPE’s Sacia Burton with 59,480 votes, finishing ahead of ABC’s Stephen Molnar, who received 50,801 votes.
Other ABC candidates in the Park Board race included Marie Rogers with 49,330 votes, Christian Kyle with 48,714 votes, Cheryl Grant with 48,503 votes, Chris Qiu with 47,471 votes, Jay Bailey with 41,868 votes, and incumbent Jas Virdi with 41,745 votes. With COPE holding an outright majority of four commissioners alongside three Green commissioners, the board’s ideological leanings have shifted sharply.
School Board Contest Breakdown
In the School Board race, COPE candidates took all four top positions. COPE’s Suzie Mah led the field with 83,416 votes. She was followed by Melanie Cheng with 79,633 votes, Gwen Giesbrecht with 72,708 votes, and Derrick O’Keefe with 72,639 votes.
OneCity’s Krista Sigurdson placed fifth in the School Board race with 64,937 votes. Green candidate Julie Strilesky received 64,611 votes, and Green candidate Alisha Masongsong received 62,757 votes. OneCity’s Rory Brown received 61,300 votes.
OneCity’s Steve Cardwell secured the ninth and final School Board trustee position with 58,198 votes, ahead of fellow OneCity candidate Sherry Breshears who received 57,703 votes. ABC’s highest-placing School Board candidate was Maria Kritikos with 53,476 votes, followed by Alfred Chien with 53,244 votes and Lina Vargas with 52,347 votes.
Broader Defeat for ABC Vancouver
The results on the Park and School Boards extend ABC’s broader defeat in the election, which included losing the mayor’s office and all but one City Council seat. Green mayoral candidate and sitting city councillor Pete Fry defeated Sim, while Mike Klassen was the only ABC city councillor re-elected.
Left-wing and progressive parties now hold all Park Board and School Board seats, as well as 10 of the 11 City Council positions including Fry’s mayoral seat. Final civic election results are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, Oct. 21.