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 to 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 1 a.m. Sunday with 148 of the 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 71,498 votes, followed by fellow Green candidate Spencer Van Vloten with 59,385 votes.

COPE’s T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss placed third with 58,337 votes, followed by COPE’s Tamiko Suzuki with 57,643 votes, Green candidate Breanne Smart with 57,114 votes, and COPE’s Jamie Han with 55,735 votes.

COPE’s Sacia Burton secured the seventh and final seat with 54,041 votes, ahead of ABC’s Stephen Molnar, who received 47,249 votes at the time of writing.

The next closest candidates were also from ABC: Marie Rogers with 45,842 votes, Christian Kyle with 45,301 votes, Cheryl Grant with 45,074 votes, and Chris Qiu with 44,175 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 75,541 votes, followed by Melanie Cheng with 72,324 votes, Derrick O’Keefe with 65,903 votes, and Gwen Giesbrecht with 65,896 votes.

Green candidate Julie Strilesky placed fifth with 59,314 votes, followed by OneCity’s Krista Sigurdson with 58,378 votes, Green candidate Alisha Masongsong with 57,578 votes, and OneCity’s Rory Brown with 55,168 votes.

OneCity’s Steve Cardwell secured the ninth and final trustee position with 52,162 votes. He finished ahead of fellow OneCity candidate Sherry Breshears, who received 51,697 votes.

ABC’s highest-placing School Board candidate was Maria Kritikos with 49,830 votes, followed by Alfred Chien with 49,637 votes and Lina Vargas with 48,837 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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