B.C. Election Day: Vancouver voters to choose 12 MLAs

It's election day in B.C. and residents in Vancouver are heading to the polls to choose 12 MLAs to represent them for the next four years.

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Published Oct 19, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  6 minute read

It's election day in B.C. and residents in Vancouver are heading to the polls to choose 12 MLAs to represent them for the next four years. PNimg

It’s election day in B.C. and Vancouver residents are heading to the polls to choose 12 MLAs to represent them for the next four years.

For information on where to cast your vote in Vancouver, click here. And here is the list of candidates in each of the city’s 12 ridings, including:

• Vancouver-Fraserview
• Vancouver-Hastings
• Vancouver-Kensington
• Vancouver-Langara
• Vancouver-Little Mountain
• Vancouver-Point Grey
• Vancouver-Quilchena
• Vancouver-Renfrew
• Vancouver-South Granville
• Vancouver-Strathcona
• Vancouver-West End
• Vancouver-Yaletown

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If you are still deciding who to vote for, check out our handy guide outlining 12 hot topics and where the three major parties stand on each one HERE. And you can read more about what’s at stake in this year’s election for Vancouver residents below.

Follow our live-blog HERE throughout the day and night for the latest election news from around B.C., and we’ll keep this post updated tonight with Vancouver election results and reaction. You can also learn more about how the votes will be counted HERE.

It’s a new election day in Vancouver and there’s three new ridings to show for it: Vancouver-Yaletown, Vancouver-South Granville and Vancouver-Little Mountain.

The Electoral Boundaries Commission redistributed seats and an act passed in 2023 increased B.C. legislature seats from 87 to 93, creating four new ridings in the Lower Mainland. Across the province, the changes resulted in adjusting 72 boundaries and changing the names of 41 of them.

Several Vancouver ridings also saw boundary changes after the last provincial election in 2020.

Vancouver-Hastings was one of the few B.C. ridings that didn’t see boundary changes. NDP Attorney General Niki Sharma first took office in 2020 after winning 60.56 per cent of the Hastings vote. She is running again and faces Jacob Burdge of the Conservative party, Bridget Burns of the Green party and Zsolt Kiss who is an independent.

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Vancouver-West End also didn’t see any boundary shifts. Five-time MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert has represented the NDP in Vancouver-West End since 2008. In the last election, he won 62.31 per cent of the West End vote. Jon Ellacott is running for the Conservative party and Eoin O’Dwyer is running for the Green party. Carl Turnbull is running as an independent.

In Vancouver-Kensington, the NDP’s Mable Elmore has been in office since 2009. She won 59.97 per cent of the Kensington vote in 2020. While many of the Vancouver ridings held by the NDP are considered strongholds for the party, this one could be in play and Elmore is being challenged by Conservative candidate Syed Mohsin. Amy Fox of the Green party is also running.

NDP Health Minister Adrian Dix is running again in Vancouver-Renfrew. Dix first took office in 2005, and he won 67.81 per cent of the Renfrew vote in the last election. Tom Ikonomou of the Conservative party and Lawrence Taylor of the Green party are also running.

In Vancouver-Strathcona, the NDP’s Joan Phillip first took office with 67.79 per cent of the vote in a 2023 byelection after Melanie Mark resigned in April 2023. This riding used to be named Vancouver-Mount Pleasant and is considered a safe seat for the NDP. The riding changes in 2023 gave the Gastown neighbourhood to Vancouver-Yaletown and southern Mount Pleasant to Vancouver-Little Mountain. Scott Muller is running for the Conservatives, Kimball Cariou is running for the Communist Party of B.C. and Simon de Weerdt is running for the Greens.

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Two high-profile candidates are vying for the new riding of Vancouver-Yaletown. Former Vancouver Police Department member Terry Yung, who is married to Vancouver city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung, is running for the NDP while former Vancouver city councillor Melissa De Genova is running for the Conservative party. De Genova is married to a VPD officer and she served three terms on city council and the Vancouver park board.

NDP leader David Eby is seeking his third term representing Vancouver-Point Grey, which he first won in 2013 when he defeated incumbent B.C. Liberal leader Christy Clark. This year, Eby’s top competition is expected to come from Paul Ratchford of the Conservatives. Devyani Singh is running again for the Green party, after finishing third in this riding in 2020, with 17 per cent of the vote. This riding on Vancouver’s west side has been redrawn so that it excludes a part of Kitsilano with many renter households, while adding part of Dunbar largely made up of single-family houses. This change could make the race harder for the NDP.

Vancouver-Quilchena is a longtime B.C. Liberal stronghold, with the party winning the seat in every election since the riding’s creation in 1991. The riding was represented in the legislature from 2013 to 2022 by former B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson, before he resigned and was replaced, in a 2022 byelection, by the party’s next leader, Kevin Falcon. Falcon led the Liberals as they changed their name to B.C. United in 2023 and then, earlier this year, announced the struggling party would suspend its campaign to support the surging Conservatives. The Conservative candidate in Quilchena is Dallas Brodie, who faces the NDP’s Callista Ryan and Green candidate Michael Barkusky, who also ran in Quilchena in 2020 and finished in third place with 15.4 per cent of the vote. Caroline Ying-Mei Wang is running as an independent.

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Vancouver-Fraserview has been a swing riding dating back to the early 1990s, consistently electing MLAs representing the party that ends up forming government. NDP incumbent George Chow first won the riding in 2017, when he defeated B.C. Liberal incumbent Suzanne Anton as the NDP went on to form government later that year. Chow won the riding comfortably in 2020, with 56 per cent of the vote. This year, he is up against Conservative challenger Jag S. Sanghera, and Green candidate Françoise Raunet, who also ran in Fraserview in 2020, finishing third with nine per cent of the vote.

Vancouver-Langara has been a stronghold for the B.C. Liberals for more than three decades. But the boundaries have shifted eastward, encompassing part of the Sunset neighbourhood that was formerly in Vancouver-Fraserview, and this could be a close race. Michael Lee won Langara for the Liberals in 2020 with 48.51 per cent of the vote, defeating NDP challenger Tessica Truong who picked up 41.36 per cent. Lee is not seeking re-election this year, and has not publicly endorsed any of the candidates in his old riding. The race is between three first-time provincial candidates: Conservative candidate Bryan Breguet, the NDP’s Sunita Dhir, and Scottford Price of the Greens.

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Another new riding, Vancouver-Little Mountain, has been created for this year’s election from pieces of five ridings, largely Fairview, which supported the NDP in 2020, and Langara, which supported the Liberals. The race will see two prominent figures from Vancouver municipal politics face off: sitting second-term city councillor Christine Boyle representing the NDP and past three-term park board commissioner John Coupar running for the Conservatives. Wendy Hayko will run for the Green party.

Vancouver-South Granville is another new riding for 2024, created from parts of Vancouver-Fairview, Vancouver-False Creek and Vancouver-Point Grey. NDP MLA Brenda Bailey is running in Vancouver-South Granville this year, instead of the new Vancouver-Yaletown, which was largely carved out of the previous Vancouver-False Creek that riding she won in 2020. Bailey will face Aron Lageri of the Conservative party and Green candidate Adam Hawk.

Read more of our B.C. election coverage in these municipalities:

• Vancouver
• Surrey
• Burnaby
• Richmond and Delta
• Langley
• North Vancouver and West Vancouver
• Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam and New Westminster
• Maple Ridge and Port Moody
• Abbotsford and Chilliwack
• Okanagan and around B.C.
• Vancouver Island

RACE FOR B.C.: Follow our coverage of the 2024 B.C. election campaign HERE. Not yet a subscriber? Please click HERE for a special subscription offer.

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