TEAM selects Colleen Hardwick for second Vancouver mayoral bid | Daily Hive

TEAM selects former city councillor Colleen Hardwick for second Vancouver mayoral run

Colleen Hardwick. (TEAM For A Livable Vancouver)

The TEAM for a Livable Vancouver party has selected former city councillor Colleen Hardwick as its candidate for mayor, alongside the first three nominees for Vancouver City Council, as the party begins assembling its slate ahead of the October 2026 civic election.

Last month, the party’s membership chose Hardwick to lead the party’s mayoral bid, with additional City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board candidates expected to be confirmed at a second meeting in June.

During her time in office and past election campaigns, she has been a vocal critic of Vancouver’s pace and scale of development and the direction of city governance — a stance she says has only strengthened under Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver governing party.

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“For years now, Vancouver has been pushed off course. We have watched basic services deteriorate. We have seen neighbourhoods reshaped without meaningful consultation. We have seen safety decline, affordability collapse, and residents treated as an afterthought. And every other party at City Hall has contributed to the culture that allowed this to happen,” said Hardwick.

Hardwick was first elected into office under the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) party, previously serving on City Council from 2018 to 2022. After leaving the NPA midway into the term, she resurrected her father’s TEAM party and was also the party’s mayoral candidate in the 2022 civic election, earning 16,769 seats for a third-place finish — behind Forward Together’s Kennedy Stewart’s 49,593 votes and ABC Vancouver’s Ken Sim’s 85,73 votes.

She also came in third place in the April 2025 by-election for City Council, winning 17,352 votes — trailing OneCity Vancouver’s Lucy Maloney’s 33,732 votes and COPE’s Sean Orr’s 34,448 votes.

Joining her on the initial City Council slate are Peter Tu, Charles Kelly, and Kathleen Larsen. According to TEAM, the candidates bring a mix of business, public service, and urban planning experience, and share a focus on affordability, public safety, and community engagement.

Kelly, a longtime Vancouver resident with a background in federal public service and business ownership, previously worked on national housing policy and international urban development initiatives.

Larsen brings more than two decades of municipal planning experience and currently serves as a director at the Vancouver Heritage Foundation. She cited concern about the city’s future as a key motivation for running.

Tu, an entrepreneur and former operations leader, highlighted his experience navigating regulatory systems and managing a business through the pandemic as central to his approach to governance.

Also last month, Vancouver’s three left-leaning parties — Coalition of Progressive Electors, Green Party of Vancouver, and OneCity Vancouver — reached an agreement to limit the number of candidates each will run across the three municipally elected bodies: Vancouver City Council, Vancouver Park Board, and Vancouver School Board. The arrangement is aimed at reducing competition among progressive candidates and improving their overall chances of election. All three parties are expected to confirm their full slates by the first half of May 2026.

As well, under this agreement, each party can field their own mayoral candidate, but the parties will “agree to engage in a good-faith effort to determine which progressive mayor is best suited to compete.”

The Greens have chosen sitting city councillor Pete Fry as their first mayoral candidate in 30 years, while OneCity has nominated William Azaroff.

This past weekend, COPE nominated former BC Housing executive Stephanie Allen as their mayoral candidate.

Other confirmed mayoral candidates include ABC incumbent Ken Sim, Vancouver Liberals’ Kareem Allam, and Vote Vancouver sitting city councillor Rebecca Bligh.

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