Vancouver’s political candidates make expensive campaign promises. Here’s how they say they’ll pay for them

Candidates running in Vancouver’s municipal election are promising to deliver all kinds of goodies if they’re elected, such as new public facilities and free parking.

We asked Vancouver’s seven major civic parties to explain how much they expect pledges to cost — and how they intend to pay for them.

Their responses included a mix of reallocating spending away from non-priority areas, increasing taxes on things such as empty homes, and attempting to get money from senior governments.

Here’s a breakdown:

ABC Vancouver’s campaign for a second council majority includes promises to:

• Renovate or rebuild five community centres at a cost of $400 million.

• Build a new community centre in the River District at an estimated cost of $80 million.

• Deliver a new Aquatic Centre with a 50-metre pool, instead of the 25-metre option approved by the current council and park board, expected to cost $175 million.

• Provide free basic swimming lessons for residents, estimated to cost about $450,000 in lost revenue annually. There is no estimate for the cost of additional instructors.

• Remove paid parking, introduced by the current council, at some community centres and Spanish Banks, and end fees for residential parking permits. These measures are expected to result in about $3.75 million in lost revenue for the city.

ABC says it expects to pay for these, in part, by redirecting funds away from areas outside of core municipal responsibilities.

For 2026, the final municipal budget of the ABC-majority council’s current term, the city froze property taxes by implementing cuts to certain areas. The largest cuts hit the planning department (where a 14 per cent, or $5.5 million, cut was planned), and arts, culture and community services (where a 12 per cent, or $6 million, cut was planned). ABC’s so-called “back to basics” budget was expected to result in cutting the equivalent of about 400 full-time positions. That included about 130 non-union jobs, such as Vancouver’s chief equity officer position, which had a salary of more than $170,000 and was eliminated last year.

ABC Vancouver’s Ken Sim pledged that, if ABC wins a second term, it would freeze property taxes again in 2027, to be followed by increases at or below the rate of inflation. Sim says that after four years getting city hall’s financial house in order, he is confident his party can deliver these promises over the coming four years without the big tax hikes that came during ABC’s first term.

ABC’s campaign includes another possible avenue of raising revenue: The party says it will ask the province to redirect all provincial school taxes paid by Vancouver taxpayers to be spent within the city. ABC says the province collected about $658 million in school taxes this year, but the Vancouver school board got only about $598 million in provincial grants.

“Our ask is clear: If the province is collecting money from Vancouverites for schools, it should go to Vancouver schools,” Sim said. “Give Vancouver students the $60 million shortfall that the province keeps and let’s keep investing in Vancouver classrooms.”

As for the new community centre in River District, the city expects development firm Wesgroup to deliver “all or part” of the facility under the company’s July 2022 agreement with Vancouver to build high-density housing in the area. The community centre’s timeline has become uncertain, and Wesgroup has cancelled some River District projects citing poor market conditions.