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What people stop John about most, and what he would do about each.

Mental illness and addiction are health problems, and arrests, court dates and jail do not make anyone well. A day in a provincial jail costs $418, and almost 7 in 10 people in those jails have a mental health or addiction diagnosis.

Sources: Statistics Canada, operating expenditures for adult correctional services, 2023 to 2024 (opens in a new tab); Province of British Columbia, Profile of BC Corrections, 2026 (opens in a new tab); Vancouver Coastal Health, presentation to Council, October 7, 2025 (opens in a new tab); Province of British Columbia, Road to Recovery announcement, December 4, 2023 (opens in a new tab).

Car 87 works: a police officer and a nurse answer a crisis together, and that person's later police contact falls by almost half. John will push for Car 87 around the clock and more cars, vote to end Council's 2025 pause on City land for supportive housing, offer City land for voluntary recovery housing, and press the Province to open the 50 voluntary treatment and recovery beds it promised Vancouver for March 2025.

Falls are the leading cause of injury deaths and hospital stays for people 65 and older across the Province, and one in three older adults falls every year. A cracked sidewalk, a missing curb ramp or an icy corner can keep someone with a walker at home all winter, and clearing the sidewalk is the property owner's job by law, not the City's.

Sources: BC Injury Research and Prevention Unit, falls among older adults (opens in a new tab); City of Vancouver, winter maintenance on streets and sidewalks (opens in a new tab).

John will push the City to fix sidewalks and add curb ramps and benches first on the routes seniors use most, to shops, clinics and bus stops, and to grow the volunteer snow-clearing help so no senior is trapped by an uncleared sidewalk.

Property tax is up about 24 per cent since 2023, yet the City is still about $500 million a year short of keeping its roads, pools and community centres in good repair. And the Auditor General keeps finding money that is not looked after: on one land sale the City paid a $12.1 million charge that was the developer's to pay, and Council was not told.

Sources: City of Vancouver, 2027 to 2030 Capital Plan, July 2026 (opens in a new tab); Office of the Auditor General for the City of Vancouver, Audit of Land Sales and Exchanges, February 2026 (opens in a new tab); Office of the Auditor General for the City of Vancouver, Follow-Up Report, June 2026 (opens in a new tab).

Fiscal responsibility is simple: look after what we have before buying anything new, and know where every dollar goes. John will not vote for unnecessary tax increases, and will push Council to give every open audit recommendation a date and a public vote.

The City promised xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) a say in big projects while they are still being planned, and it has started to keep that promise. The Vancouver UNDRIP Action Plan, adopted in 2024, has 88 tasks; by the end of 2025, 11 were done and 31 under way. Urban Indigenous residents are not the Host Nations and need their own voice at City Hall.

Source: City of Vancouver, UNDRIP Task Force Annual Report, June 3, 2026 (opens in a new tab).

John will push Council to keep that momentum, and to keep paying for it when budgets get tight.

John spent his working life as an advocate, helping people with tenancy, disability and human rights problems. A 2022 review of Vancouver's social services found at least ten City departments and provincial ministries involved, each working on its own. That means money spent twice on the same thing, and people sent from one office to the next.

Source: Vancouver Police Department, Vancouver's Social Safety Net: Rebuilding the Broken, November 2022 (opens in a new tab).

John will push the City to map every support service in Vancouver and get the ones doing similar work to coordinate. That saves money, makes each service better at its job, and lets a person get help from more than one of them without starting over every time.

Family-owned shops, cafes and restaurants give each neighbourhood its character. The last few years have been brutal for them: the pandemic, then new towers and major construction on their doorstep. Along Broadway, businesses have lived with subway construction outside their doors for years, and some have closed. The City's own Broadway Plan calls them 'fixtures of their neighbourhoods', and it needs to act like it.

Source: City of Vancouver, Broadway Plan, report to Council, May 18, 2022 (opens in a new tab).

John will work with local businesses, their associations and City planners to plan for the shops on the street before the digging starts, and to keep local character while the housing we need gets built.

The Province writes the rules of the road, and TransLink runs the buses and SkyTrain. The City controls its own streets and traffic lights. Traffic delay costs the region's bus system more than $115 million a year.

Sources: TransLink, 2025 Bus Speed and Reliability Report, June 2026 (opens in a new tab); City of Vancouver, 2027 to 2030 Capital Plan, streets inventory, July 2026 (opens in a new tab).

Most of Vancouver's lights are decades old and run on fixed schedules. Newer signals adjust as traffic builds, hold a green longer for a bus running late, and time the lights so a driver at the speed limit meets green after green instead of stopping at every block. John will push to replace the old signals first, so cars and buses both move.

Two large AI data centres are proposed in Vancouver. One data centre can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, and the City's report on one of these says nothing about water, the City's climate goals or the Host Nations.

Sources: City of Vancouver, referral report on the 111 East 5th Avenue rezoning, June 30, 2026 (opens in a new tab); International Energy Agency, Energy and AI, 2025 (opens in a new tab); City of Vancouver, UNDRIP Action Plan 2024 to 2028 (opens in a new tab).

John supports an immediate pause on both until their power, water and land needs are known. This is where the City's UNDRIP Action Plan should be followed, with xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) at the table. Vancouver has the inventions to build data centres that need far less power and cooling. John wants the City to back them and lead, instead of following and damaging the environment.