Vancouver’s longest-serving city councillor announces resignation, citing frustrations with mayor’s party

Vancouverites can expect two names on a municipal byelection ballot in the coming months after Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr announced her resignation Wednesday.

Speaking at City Hall, the Green Party councillor says she took the holidays to consider retirement. Carr says she wanted to spend more time with her family and has grown frustrated with the ABC Party’s governing style.

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Carr is currently Vancouver’s longest-serving councillor after holding a seat on council for 14 years.

In December, she went public about her frustrations with working with Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority.

Carr said then that she’s never felt so dismissed on council by the ABC supermajority that she says supersedes any healthy debate about the direction the city is taking.

“I believe that there have been too many decisions that are not in the best interest of the city and good government examples,” said Carr Wednesday.

She cited a specific instance of the ABC party shooting down a motion “aimed at ensuring councillor motions would align with best practices of good government.”

Carr says she also believes Sim has wrongly conflated the concept of public safety with support of the police department.

“In my opinion, adding more police officers, body cams, and money to a police budget, that’s almost one-fifth of our total city budget, $434 million a year, is not going to make students safer. I’ve worked closely with Moms Stop the Harm, a group of parents who have lost children to the opioid poison drug crisis. I’m clear we need to focus on collaborating with senior governments to get criminal gains out of the poisoned drug supply to provide safe supply and treatment on demand,” she said.

Additionally, on housing and the use of public land, Carr says she has “lost trust and confidence” in Mayor Sim.

“In my opinion, some of his actions do not genuinely mesh with his mantra that we are all one team. If we were all one team, I don’t think he would have removed Coun. [Pete] Fry and myself from the external positions that we have always expressed that we love to Metro Vancouver.”

Conduct within the walls of City Hall, she says, pushed her decision to leave past its tipping point.

“This super-majority ABC council has convinced me it’s better for democracy to have a mix of parties and councillors who are prepared to collaborate and cooperate with the goal of proving public interest first, instead of a majority, and especially a supermajority that really doesn’t have to listen to any other opinions that has the ability to push through whatever is on their agenda.”

Finally, as a Green Party member, Carr says barriers she’s faced raising environmental issues in council have been the most disheartening.

“I feel we’re running out of time to make the changes that we need, especially around the climate issue, and I just don’t think I can make any progress here.”

OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle is also leaving an open seat on council after being elected to the Vancouver-Mount Pleasant riding for the BC NDP in the provincial election in October.

Carr says Boyle’s departure also served as inspiration for her own. She expressed her hope that OneCity and the Green Party of Vancouver continue to collaborate.

Their resignations do not change the balance of power on council — with ABC councillors holding eight seats, including Mayor Sim.

But political science professor Hamish Telford says ABC could boost its supermajority with a byelection.

“Depending on how those elections go, there could be just one non-ABC member on council, which doesn’t give us a great diversity of opinion,” said Telford.

He says toxicity has become a trend in politics in Canada and globally.

“It becomes very, very draining. And understandably, someone who’s been involved in it for a long time would feel fatigued and burned out by it.”

Telford explains that the battle for “green politics” ebbs and flows, and is currently at a “low point.”

“When people are feeling economically secure and strong, they become concerned about the environment. And when you flip that around and people start to have concerns about buying food, paying rent, buying a house, their concern for the environment ebbs… This is a very difficult time to engage in green initiatives.”

Telford says the opposition parties could strengthen their candidates’ prospects by coordinating their efforts.