Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart sits down with Coastal Front for a candid, no-holds-barred conversation about Ken Sim, the UBC SkyTrain, policing, property taxes and the future of Vancouver ahead of the 2026 municipal election.
Stewart looks back on his time as an NDP MP and his 2018–2022 term as mayor of Vancouver: leading a split city council, getting the city through COVID, helping bring the FIFA World Cup to BC, and securing funding for the Broadway Plan and the SkyTrain extension to UBC. He explains why he believes the UBC SkyTrain line was fully funded when he left office, what went wrong under Mayor Ken Sim, and why he says Sim “had four years to deliver.”
We also get into:
🔹 Why he says he was “never about defunding police,” and how he thinks Sim’s 100-officer pledge drove up property taxes
🔹 Housing affordability, rental housing, super towers and the Carney–Eby housing announcement
🔹 Whether Metro Vancouver’s cities should amalgamate
🔹 Party discipline in Ottawa, his book with Michael Chong, and working with Harper, Trudeau, Singh and Carney
🔹 Whether he’ll ever run for office again