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Cracks in the East Van stronghold
NDP strongholds in Vancouver East and Vancouver Kingsway appear to be toss up ridings on election day.
Nate Lewis & Joe Paris
April 25, 2025
Good morning,
Nate back with you today. On a beautiful Wednesday morning this week, members of the Vancouver Angels U11 youth girls hockey team made the official announcement that we’re getting a PWHL team, which will hit the ice at Pacific Coliseum starting next year.
The team’s colours – Pacific blue and cream – were announced but the team name and branding has yet to be decided. However, Lookout readers decisively dubbed the new team the Vancouver Ravens. We’ll see if the league takes our suggestion!
Switching gears, this week's big event is obviously the final push before Monday’s federal election. While we haven’t been covering this election (as you can find comprehensive coverage at nearly every other news outlet) we did want to put together at least one locally-oriented election story for Vancouverites.
Today, we’ve got a piece by freelance writer and journalist Joe Paris on Liberal drift in East Van’s NDP strongholds. ‘Tis the season for door-knocking, and Joe did just that to get some great interviews around the neighbourhood.
Let’s get to it!
— Nate Lewis, Vancity Lookout
Editor’s note: In Wednesday’s story, we misspelled Erica Olson’s last name. The error has been corrected and we apologize for the mistake.
PS - If you find this newsletter valuable, please consider forwarding it to your friends. New to the Lookout? Sign-up for free.
If you have a tip, lead, or story idea, reach out to Nate at [email protected]
WEATHER
Friday: 18 🌡️ 7 | 🌤️
Saturday: 14 🌡️ 6 | ☀️
Sunday: 12 🌡️ 6 | 🌤️
Monday: 11 🌡️ 8 | 🌧️
VANCOUVER NUMBERS
⚽ 53,837: The record-breaking number of people that showed up at BC Place last night to see the Whitecaps win 2-0 against Lionel Messi and Inter Miami in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions Cup Semifinals. [X]
🚘 15,000 km: If you have a vehicle and drive less than this distance per year, you can get a discount on your insurance. [Urbanized]
FEDERAL ELECTION
Cracks in the East Van stronghold
There were long lines along East Hastings on April 22nd as voters waited to cast their advance ballots at the Atrium Hotel in Vancouver East / Joe Paris
This story is only accessible for Vancity Lookout members like yourself. Thank you for supporting our hyper-local journalism in Vancouver. Please enjoy this story.
By Joe Paris
With just a few days to go before the federal election, all eyes are on the two front-running parties. As of Thursday, April 24, polls have the Liberals leading nationally with 42.2 per cent of the vote compared to the Conservatives at 38.5 per cent. Meanwhile, the NDP languishes far behind, sitting at 8.8 per cent. The NDP won about 18 per cent of the popular vote in 2021.
In East Van, national trends and an existential threat from down south appear to be translating into substantial Liberal gains.
With Canadian sovereignty threatened and tariffs still looming, Vancouver East Liberal supporter Thomas Panos says there is a growing feeling among lifelong NDP voters in his circle that Mark Carney, with his long and illustrious CV, is “just the right man for the moment.”
“I don’t want to say they’re holding their noses,” Panos said of his more left-leaning friends, “but they’re going to vote Liberal this time, because of the existential threat that we’re facing. It has much less to do with strategically voting against Pollievre, and it’s more like asking ‘who do we think can help us the most?’”
NDP incumbents Don Davies and Jenny Kwan have held their Vancouver Kingsway and Vancouver East seats since 2008 and 2015, respectively, and both ridings are considered orange strongholds. Historically, Vancouver East has gone NDP since the party was founded in 1961, with just two one-term Liberal MP’s breaking up their dominance. Prior to Davies, Kingsway voters picked Liberal representatives for the previous decade but have also largely chosen NDP MPs since the 60s.
However, Kingsway is now being called a “toss-up,” and Vancouver East is seeing Liberal support grow steadily, according to strategic voting resource SmartVoting.
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Conservative candidates are still lagging much further behind the Liberal and NDP candidates in both ridings, so “vote splitting” on the left is not considered a serious concern in either one. But NDP voters in these ridings may be defecting to the Liberal camp for ideological reasons, according to SFU political science professor Dr. Sanjay Jeram.
Dr. Sanjay Jeram is a senior lecturer and Undergraduate Program Chair in the Department of Political Science at SFU / SFU photo
“What you have is a ballot question that is turning people to focus on something beyond … their general priorities.”
Jeram calls this a “different kind of strategic voting,” whereby larger international forces could be overriding local issues.
“I think strategic voting …looks a bit different [this time] in that Mark Carney is not running to the left,” says Jeram. “It's not like the previous election where you had Justin Trudeau moving to the left and actually trying to convince NDP voters that he shares their priorities.”
Despite Carney not pandering to the left, the NDP’s base may be more likely than they have in the past to shift their votes because of demographic changes, in East Van and nationwide. Jerum explained how the NDP base has been changing from “predominantly working class” voters to “one that is sort of mixed but highly educated, and that votes for them based on values.”
Those [newer NDP voters] are the people … that could be more open to Carney in this context – because they're not voting for their interests, they're voting on feelings,” Jerum said.
Jerum believes local polls suggest this too. Conservative support appears relatively stable in both ridings, he pointed out, but Liberal support is inching upwards. So, “it just seems like the only logical inference is that it's from NDP voters,” Jerum said.
Milo Wu, a youth counsellor living in the Kingsway riding, said he’ll be switching his vote this election. “I have been a lifelong NDP person, but I am voting Liberal this time to send a message of unity. To strengthen the governing voice,” Wu said.
Longtime self-described “left-of-centre” Liberal supporter Bill Paskiewich, whose house is adorned with all sorts of colourful Canadian paraphernalia, including a pair of Heinz Ketchup socks that hang from his front door, believes that outsider Liberal candidate and real estate agent Mark Wiens could defeat incumbent Jenny Kwan and ride the “Carney momentum” into parliament.
Lifelong Liberal supporter Bill Paskiewich on the porch of his East Van home / Joe Paris photo
Paskiewich, a retired mill quality supervisor who has lived in his East Van home for 50 years, says “the anti-Trump thing, and the cost at the till are on everyone’s minds.” Paskiewich adds that he would be out there canvassing for Wiens if it weren’t for his recent knee operation.
Another nearby resident, too busy making dinner to answer questions about how he was planning to vote, wanted to make one thing clear over the sound of his dog barking: “All I can tell you is I’m voting for Carney.”
Jerum, who also lives in Vancouver East, said he’s “never seen the Liberals mobilize in the riding like they have. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that the Liberals believe they can win.” Jerum concurs, saying he believes the riding is culturally, demographically, and economically diverse enough that the Liberals could benefit from a last-minute push, especially from new voters who may not have felt their vote counted in the past.
A collective sense of patriotic duty seems to be at least in part driving voters to the polls this go-around, with record advance voting numbers perhaps reflecting many voters’ determination to protect fundamental Canadian values. This momentum will likely carry into voting day on Monday.
As Canadians mobilize to vote, Jayden Quiring, a young Liberal campaigner, says he’s been sensing a shift in Vancouver East: “Some houses I’m going to, you can notice opinions changing. Some people just aren’t happy with Jenny Kwan. She’s been in office a long time,” Quiring argued.
Kwan began her political career at age 26 as the youngest ever member of Vancouver City Council, before moving to provincial politics in 1996. In 2001, Kwan was one of two NDP MLAs to survive the party’s collapse at the hands of Gordon Campbell’s Liberals. She was first elected as the MP for Vancouver East in 2015, and has won two subsequent elections.
In Kingsway, the Liberals have turned the riding into a battleground for the first time since Davies took it over 17 years ago. Liberal candidate Amy Gill, an accountant by trade, will have to fight tooth and nail to unseat Davies, the longest-serving MP in Kingsway’s history. Before his tenure as MP, Davies served workers and unions as the director of legal services for Teamsters Canada for 16 years.
There are still plenty of orange signs supporting Don Davies and Jenny Kwan spread across East Van / Joe Paris photo
Some local NDP supporters say they’re going to stay the course. Grace, a longtime Kingsway resident and care aide, said she will be supporting Don Davies again because she likes what he represents: “He is fighting to make life better for working people,” Grace said. Grace was one of several voters Vancity Lookout spoke with who didn’t want to share their last names.
In the NDP campaign’s homestretch, Leader Jagmeet Singh directly addressed the issue of Liberal gains in his party’s core ridings. Less than a week before election day, Singh told supporters at his Burnaby press conference that “British Columbians will decide what happens next; whether Mark Carney gets a supermajority, or whether there are enough New Democrats in Parliament to hold the line.”
This message is resonating with longtime Vancouver East NDP voter Julian. “Lately, best-case scenario has absolutely been a minority government where the NDP holds the balance of power,” he says. “A lot of my friends aren’t tremendously impressed with Jagmeet because he hasn’t been making enough of an impact... but he actually achieved stuff, like dental care,” Julian said.
In Canada’s first-past-the-post system, strategic voting and vote shifting in elections like this one can strain smaller parties, potentially leading to a more polarized two-party system. Jordan, a Vancouver East voter who moved to Canada from Iran 20 years ago and preferred not to give his real name, says it’s unfortunate that the system discourages people from voting for third-party candidates. “If Trudeau had actually followed through on his 2015 campaign promise [of doing away with first-past-the-post in favour of proportional representation], maybe it wouldn’t be like this,” he said
One of the purported advantages of the first-past-the-post system is that it is designed to produce representatives beholden to defined geographic areas. And with its diverse electorate, local issues are still on the table in Vancouver East and Kingsway. Don Davies’ grassroots campaign approach remains focused on local issues, and Davies believes it will pay off.
Angela Evans, Executive Director of the Collingwood BIA, says the business community would like to see whoever gets elected address local issues, notably high property valuations and taxes, and the lack of rent caps for commercial tenants.
“Everyone here is pretty micro-thinking, because they’re trying to run their businesses,” Evans said. “Another issue we’re dealing with is loss of funding for our festival, which is very important to the community ... especially for newcomers who rely on these types of events to meet other people in the community.”
With many newcomers to Canada calling East Vancouver home, Executive Director of Collingwood Neighbourhood House Betty Lepps says the community is also very focused on immigration. “The Neighbourhood House just lost all of its [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] funding. So we get a sense of this issue being top of mind for the constituents in this area.”
Other key issues are housing and, increasingly, food security. “We have a food drop program on Thursday afternoons, and we usually get about 100 to 150 people in line, and we’ve now started a waitlist of about another 100 people, because we have a lot of seniors,” Lepps said.
According to Elections Canada, average resident income for Vancouver East and Kingsway was $55,100 and $48,560, respectively. Although the ridings are becoming more economically and socially diverse, these figures remain lower than all other Vancouver ridings, save Vancouver Fraserview—South Burnaby.
Lepps isn’t sure that the ballot question of who might be better suited to stand up to Trump will be the deciding factor for many voters in the area, but she says that many residents have expressed that they “don’t want what is happening down South. They’re proud to be in Canada.”
While it ultimately remains unclear how much the Trump factor might influence East Vancouver voters, one thing is certain: all eyes will be on Vancouver East and Kingsway come Monday night.
THE AGENDA
🔥 A three-building fire on East Hastings near Nanaimo early on Wednesday morning was deemed suspicious by firefighters, with police now starting a criminal investigation into the fire’s origin. The fire burned three businesses, including Dayton Boots and Windsor Meats, and closed a section of the street for much of the day. Luckily, no one was injured but seven people were temporarily evacuated from a nearby building. [Vancouver Fire Rescue Services, CityNews]
Trey Helten, a prominent advocate for drug users and beloved community member in the Downtown Eastside, was found dead at his home on Tuesday. Helten, 42, is being remembered by friends as someone who tirelessly helped people, whether through his role with Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Society, chairing Narcotics Anonymous meetings, or informally helping those in need. [Vancouver Sun]
👮 A whistleblower – who says they are a Vancouver police officer – is alleging that arrest quotas, specifically for drug charges, have been issued as part of VPD’s “Task Force Barrage” crackdown on the Downtown Eastside. In early March, three weeks after Mayor Ken Sim officially announced the task force, the officer wrote an email alleging it was “entirely motivated by politics. It has nothing to do with serving the community and public safety.” The VPD said there’s no basis for the allegation that the task force has arrest quotas. [Global, Vancouver Police Board (pg. 66), CityNews]
📊 The city is seeking input on significant changes being proposed for the city’s existing housing policy in the Downtown Eastside. The changes include flipping the requirements for inclusionary social housing developments from a 60/40 social/market rental housing split to an 80/20 market rental/social housing ratio. [COV]
🏗️ A recent report from a real estate services company found construction costs in Vancouver are higher than in eight other major Canadian cities, including the Greater Toronto Area. The report’s authors attribute the higher costs here to skilled labour shortages and seismic and building sustainability requirements. [Storeys]
💥 There have been several serious incidents over the past five weeks where people have been attacked by strangers in Chinatown, the West End, and Coal Harbour. Police say there are one or two assaults per day in the city that they classify as stranger assaults. [Glacier Media]
Outside Vancouver
🗳️ Want to compare where the Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP stand on major election issues like the economy, housing, healthcare, defence spending, and dealing with the United States? This article from Jen St. Denis has you covered. [The Tyee]
📋 Around 15,000 properties have been added to the province’s short-term rental (STR) registry as of the beginning of April. Property owners must register their STR by May 1 to continue operating legally. STR listings have dropped 22% in Vancouver since May 2024, when the province imposed restrictions on this type of rental. At the time, the province estimated there were 22,000 STRs operating in B.C. [CBC]
EXCLUSIVE
Over a year with no heat and water leaks for West End tenants
Tenants alleging a lack of timely and effective maintenance in their units and building common areas are getting some compensation, but problems remain.
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Mangia’s Sandwiches is not trying to reinvent the wheel, and that’s a very good thing
By Sara Harowitz
There are certain food establishments that are known for offering something unexpected—something different and a little wild. Mangia’s Sandwiches is not one of those places.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with fancy ingredients and new flavour combinations, the humble sandwich shop’s mission is to serve the Italian classics, done well. And it’s working.
“The idea is to try to find something that works very well every day,” says general manager Kirk Bergez, “and continue to work on the edges to improve the quality in different ways, whether it’s how we’re toasting the bread or how we’re making this spread or that sauce, more so than trying to find super novel ingredient combinations or limited-time this or that.”
Read this review + instantly subscribe to our Vancouver food and drink newsletter (think of it as a clickbait free way to discover the best new and hidden gem restaurants in Vancouver)
EVENT GUIDE
Critical Mass | A celebratory and disruptive group bike ride | Apr. 25, 6 pm | Start at Vancouver Art Gallery
Rent Cheque | Winning this amateur strip competition won’t cover your rent in full, but $500 would be nice | Apr. 25, 9pm | The Cobalt | PWYC entry ($10-15 suggested)
Capture Photography Festival | Western Canada’s largest lens-based art festival | Various exhibition locations and durations | More info
Let It Happen | A Tame Impala-inspired dance party | Apr. 25, 10 pm | Hollywood Theatre | Tickets $32
Art Vancouver 2025 | A contemporary art fair with over 100 artists | Apr. 25 - 27, various hours | Vancouver Convention Centre East | Tickets from $30
Kylie Minogue | Catch the Australian Princess of Pop at the PNE | Apr. 26, 7:30 | Pacific Coliseum | Tickets $95+
Kitsilano Farmers Market | It’s the final weekend for the Kits winter market! | Apr. 27, 10 am | 10th and Trafalgar
Vancouver Sun Run | Cheer on the runners and join the festivities. Race starts near Georgia and Burrard | Apr. 27, 9 am | Downtown and South False Creek | Watch out for road closures on race day!
Vibe Corridor | Come out for a midweek DJ set and dance session at one of the city’s top neighbourhood bars | Apr. 30, 9pm | The Lido
DOXA Film Festival | Enjoy documentary screenings, panel discussions, and public forums | May 1-11, various times and locations | Tickets ~$19 and programming info
PHOTO OF THE DAY
Balazs Horvath photo
This photo of a Whitecaps super fan before Thursday’s massive win against Inter Miami was taken by documentary photographer, filmmaker, and Lookout reader Balazs Horvath, who has generously offered to volunteer his talents.
This will hopefully be the first of many of his pictures to appear in Vancity Lookout. Thanks Balazs!
COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS
Watching this bagel professional work is so satisfying [Reddit]
ferry delayed, a poet's experience [Reddit]
Help burnish the reputation of our favourite restaurants by voting for them in the Golden Plates awards [Georgia Straight]
Creating a citizens group to ask Science World to change up their colour scheme is peak Vancouver behaviour [Reddit]
Want to have your announcement featured? Learn how here.
VANCOUVER WORDLE
Think you can guess today’s Wordle? Play it here.
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