Left-wing parties sweep Vancouver Park Board and School Board, shutting out ABC | Daily Hive

Left-wing and progressive parties sweep Vancouver Park Board and School Board, shutting out ABC

Vancouver Park Board commissioner Tom Digby. (Green Party of Vancouver)

The City of Vancouver’s significant shift deep into the left extended well beyond Vancouver City Council in the civic election on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026, with left-wing and progressive parties winning every seat on both the Vancouver Park Board and Vancouver School Board.

According to the City’s preliminary results, as of 2:30 a.m. Sunday with all 149 voting places reporting, COPE and the Green Party of Vancouver secured all seven Park Board positions, while COPE, the Greens, and OneCity Vancouver won all nine School Board seats. Ken Sim’s centre-right ABC Vancouver party was shut out of both bodies.

COPE will hold an outright majority on the Park Board, with four commissioners, alongside three Green commissioners. On the School Board, COPE will have the largest contingent with four trustees, followed by three OneCity trustees and two Green trustees.

The results extend the broader defeat of ABC, which also lost the mayor’s office and all but one of its City Council seats. Green mayoral candidate and sitting city councillor Pete Fry defeated Sim, while Mike Klassen was the only ABC city councillor re-elected.

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In the Park Board race, Green candidate Tom Digby finished first with 78,751 votes, followed by fellow Green candidate Spencer Van Vloten with 65,005 votes.

COPE’s T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss placed third with 64,192 votes, followed by COPE’s Tamiko Suzuki with 63,105 votes, Green candidate Breanne Smart with 62,420 votes, and COPE’s Jamie Han with 61,093 votes.

COPE’s Sacia Burton secured the seventh and final seat with 59,480 votes, ahead of ABC’s Stephen Molnar, who received 50,801 votes at the time of writing.

The next closest candidates were also from ABC: Marie Rogers with 49,330 votes, Christian Kyle with 48,714 votes, Cheryl Grant with 48,503 votes, and Chris Qiu with 47,471 votes. Fellow ABC candidates Jay Bailey and incumbent Jas Virdi received 41,868 and 41,745 votes, respectively.

In the School Board race, COPE candidates took all four of the top positions.

COPE’s Suzie Mah led with 83,416 votes, 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 with 64,937 votes, followed by Green candidate Julie Strilesky with 64,611 votes, Green candidate Alisha Masongsong with 62,757 votes, and OneCity’s Rory Brown with 61,300 votes.

OneCity’s Steve Cardwell secured the ninth and final trustee position with 58,198 votes. He finished 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.

Together with the City Council results, the election gives left-wing and progressive parties an overwhelming presence across Vancouver’s three elected civic bodies. They will hold all Park Board and School Board seats, as well as 10 of the 11 City Council positions when Fry’s mayoral seat is included.

These figures remain preliminary and subject to change, especially with a single voting location still outstanding at the time of writing. Final civic election results are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, Oct. 21.

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