Most Vancouverites say Park Board should be abolished, poll suggests

More than half of Vancouverites are done with the city’s Park Board, a new poll suggests.

The survey by Research Co. finds 52 per cent of those asked think the board should be eliminated. Instead, many people feel parks and recreation should be handled by city council.

Mario Canseco with the pollster thinks the results have to do with recent contentious issues, including coyote attacks at Stanley Park and politics around drinking in parks.

“Definitely, part of this has to do with the difficulties that they’ve had, dealing with several things. This is leading people who votes in these elections to actually consider a future where there is no Park Board.”

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The number of people who support the idea of getting rid of the Park Board has risen in recent years. Canseco says in November 2020, only 44 per cent felt that way.

Those who live in downtown are the most willing to abolish the Park Board, with 63 per cent.

“We haven’t seen this level of animosity in previous iterations of the Park Board, partly because we are coming off a time when specific parties had majorities and good control of things … Now, we have a little bit of dysfunction, we don’t really have a majority on things. There are discussions that go nowhere. I think that dysfunctionality is something that voters are starting to pick up on,” Canseco said.

Meanwhile, the same survey found about half of voters in Vancouver think it’s worth exploring the idea of amalgamating Metro Vancouver municipalities, like Toronto and Montreal has done.

Two thirds of people polled who voted for Kennedy Stewart in 2018 support this, while just under half who cast a ballot for Ken Sim agree.

Research Co. conducted this online study from June 7 to June 9 among 400 people. The pollster says the data has been statistically weighted according to Canadian census figures for age, gender and region in the City of Vancouver. The margin of error is +/- 4.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.