Colleen Hardwick wants to empower neighbourhoods and fight back on rezonings

This is part of our ongoing series profiling mayoral candidates in the upcoming municipal election. In case you missed them, you can read our previous profiles of Rebecca Bligh and Pete Fry.

Colleen Hardwick wears many hats. A former city councillor, Hardwick has a background in urban geography and planning, movie production, and software development for citizen engagement. 

Hardwick is the mayoral candidate for TEAM for a Liveable Vancouver, a party Hardwick describes as a voice for all neighbourhoods. “We believe in the importance of our communities and local democracy. Residents matter,” Hardwick said of TEAM’s values.  

Growing up as the oldest of four, Hardwick said she was her “father’s daughter.” Walter Hardwick was a geography professor at UBC and a city councillor from 1969 to 1974. “I grew up with urban land economics at the dinner table, so I come by it honestly,” Hardwick said.

In that environment, Hardwick was tapped into civic policy from a young age. “They’d deliver the city council agenda to the house on Mondays, and I would come scrambling home from school to get the agenda so I could go over it before Dad got home from work so we could talk about it,” Hardwick described. 

Speaking with Hardwick, it’s clear she’s very smart, detail-oriented, and observant. She describes herself as a fighter. “I'm willing to stand up for what I believe in. Why else would I do this?”

Hardwick also feels politically misunderstood. “I do resent people misrepresenting me … I am not anti-housing, I'm not right wing. All of those things are just tactics to try and discredit [me],” Hardwick told Vancity Lookout during a lengthy sit-down interview at her family home in Kitsilano, which featured visits from her husband, two grandchildren, and their dog, Candy. 

During her first term on council, Hardwick felt she was “a punching bag for people” who didn't want to hear what she had to say. “Most of that has been about trying to shine a light on what's going on [at the city],” Hardwick said. 

What’s going on, in Hardwick’s view, is that over the past several decades, the city has become increasingly reliant on real estate to drive the economy and rezonings to pay for growth and associated infrastructure. 

“When Gregor Robertson and Vision [Vancouver were elected in 2008] we saw the business model of the city change to promoting rezoning for revenue,” Hardwick explained.

“In 2009, they restructured the city's capital budget to regularize community amenity contributions as a revenue stream. Essentially, the way they pitched it was, let's have growth fund growth … [the city] turned it into a business model, being driven by pursuit of revenue,” Hardwick said. 

Community amenity contributions [CACs] are fees or facilities paid by the developer through a negotiation with the city. Importantly, CACs are required only when a property is rezoned, with the aim of capturing the increase in land value driven by rezoning.  

Hardwick believes the city can grow without broad rezonings, like those encouraged by the Broadway Plan, which she voted against in her time on council from 2018 to 2022. In her time of council, Hardwick voted ‘no’ on 11 significant rezonings, area plans, and housing policies, according to CBC. “The problem is not development. The problem is upzoning and the associated inflation,” she summarized.

The provincial NDP government’s signature housing policies — which mandate that municipalities allow for expanded, denser forms of housing — mean Hardwick has a narrower lane to work in when it comes to advancing her land use vision for the city. 

While other B.C. municipalities have resisted or grudgingly complied with the new rules, the City of Vancouver has largely gotten on board with the spirit of the NDP’s growth-oriented policies. 

When the province mandated that municipalities enact an official development plan (ODP), the city had already been working on and had passed a very similar document — the Vancouver Plan, which Hardwick also voted against during her term. 

Despite the province’s ODP requirement, which the city met by repackaging the Vancouver Plan, Hardwick feels the city “overdid it.” 

“They didn't just give the province what [was required]. They put icing on the cake. So what has to happen is a careful dissection and reevaluation of this, with the objective of achieving balance,” Hardwick said. 

For Hardwick, that would look like neighbourhood-level consultation and planning, with potentially unique plans and outcomes for different areas. 

“No one was ever saying ‘not in my backyard, we don't want any change,’” Hardwick said of her past urban planning and public consultation work. Rather, the key questions she’s focused on regarding development are where, how much, how fast, and how to achieve balance. 

“I want to have a full-on discussion about local democracy,” Hardwick told Vancity Lookout, saying it needs to be evolved.

On that front, Hardwick sees the need for three basic elements: an auditor general to conduct independent oversight of city staff, a lobbyist registry to provide more transparency on established interests influencing policy, and a different system of political representation, which could include a ward system, where councillors are selected to represent a neighbourhood, rather than being elected city-wide as they are now. 

Hardwick said she’d also be open to other ideas around enhancing democratic participation and oversight, including citizens’ assemblies. “I'm not coming in here and being prescriptive … I'm saying we’ve got to do something, but let’s figure out together what it is,” she said.

In her first term on council, Hardwick was successful in establishing an independent auditor general’s office after doing a deep dive and writing a report on the subject, along with an informal group of other councillors. Audits had previously been conducted by the city’s internal audit division.

Since the office was established in late 2020, the auditor general’s office under Mike Macdonell has investigated various city practices and found them severely lacking in some cases. In particular, the city’s Real Estate and Facilities Management Department was panned in two reports for its role in the deterioration of recreation facilities and its questionable management of city land sales. A third report, in response to a whistleblower complaint, found “serious wrongdoing” by the city for failing to ensure that promised public amenities were delivered as part of the Vancouver House development. 

Hardwick said she thinks Macdonell has done a terrific job so far, adding that the office has “only touch[ed] the tip of the iceberg … on the real estate file,” pointing to the city’s Property Endowment Fund as another area she’d like to be looked at.

When it comes to the city’s focus on reconciliation with the local Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and urban Indigenous people, Hardwick says it’s outside the municipality's jurisdiction. 

Hardwick said the city should follow the federal and provincial governments’ lead on reconciliation and is concerned about what she sees as overreach by the city. 

“Policies that are made at the senior levels of government manifest themselves at the municipal level … the city must naturally respond, but it needs to be in a responsive position,” Hardwick said. 

In 2008, the federal government created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as part of a legal settlement with residential school survivors and other groups. Its final report in 2015 made 94 recommendations, or calls to action, which the federal government is still working to respond to ten years later. The TRC’s Call to Action #43 calls on provincial and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Provincially, B.C. established the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2019, but the legislation does not include specific recommendations or requirements for municipalities. 

The City of Vancouver’s formal work on reconciliation began in 2014, predating both the TRC final report and the province’s legislation. The city’s 2014 framework designated Vancouver as a city of reconciliation and sought to create partnerships and relationships with Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and urban Indigenous people. That work has led to a variety of city initiatives. 

When asked whether, if elected Mayor, she would change the city’s reconciliation framework, policies, or programs, Hardwick said she’s “not looking at changing [anything] other than as I've been describing, ensuring that the city is sticking within its areas of responsibility.”

“I don't want to make it more complicated and I don't want to make it divisive … I am focused on the city doing its job, and part of that job will be responding to the reconciliation policies of the senior levels of government.” 

Hardwick said it’s been rough sitting on the sidelines of local politics for the past four years. She unsuccessfully ran for city council in the 2025 by-election, finishing in third place, after running for mayor for the first time in 2022, when she also finished third.   

Hardwick said people ask her, “why don't you just run for council?” rather than for mayor, to which she replies, “shoot me now.” 

“I’ve done that already, I’ve been there,” Hardwick said. “I can't be a team of one.” 

With that in mind, Hardwick said she and TEAM are aiming for a majority of seven on council in the upcoming election. The party has announced consultant Charles Kelly, urban planner Kathleen Larsen, and insurance claim adjuster and entrepreneur Peter Tu as its first three city council candidates, with four more still to be announced.  

“I think if I fight for neighbourhoods, and I fight for residents, and I fight for a future that's going to be affordable for my grandchildren, then that's something that people will get on board with,” Hardwick said.

“If I don't do this, then I will lose hope.”

Did you know the Lookout relies on readers like you to help locals discover our journalism? If you have a moment, please consider sharing this story: Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Copy this url

Have a comment on a story? Submit it to our Comment Corner and it might be included in a newsletter: Share your comment