The Vancouver Green party’s Adriane Carr announced Wednesday that she is calling it quits.
Council’s current longest serving councillor said she planned to deliver her resignation letter to city clerk Katrina Leckovic following a morning news conference she held at city hall.
“The rules are that once I hand this resignation letter in, I am immediately not a councillor,” Carr told reporters, noting she has to give up her keys and remove her free parking decal from her Toyota Prius. “Of course they'll allow me to clean out my office, but basically that's it.”
Her decision ends a 14-year run at city hall that began when she was first elected in 2011.
Carr’s resignation didn’t come as a complete surprise, with her sharing with Glacier Media, Postmedia and the Globe and Mail in November 2024 that she was “seriously considering” leaving her post at city hall.
At the time — and at Wednesday’s news conference — the reasons she gave for leaving included frustrations with Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC Vancouver majority, and wanting to spend more time with her family.
“I've come to the conclusion that on the issues that really drive me, that drove me to run for office — and have been predominant issues in my life around particularly sustainability and the health of this planet — I can't make much progress,” she said.
“In addition, I have lost trust and confidence in the mayor. In my opinion, some of his actions do not genuinely mesh with his mantra that we are all one team.”
In-camera meeting
She referenced a recent in-camera meeting and said it was the “tipping point” in cementing her decision to resign. Carr wouldn’t elaborate, but said, “I think fellow councillors and staff who were in the room at the time will know what I'm talking about and understand my position.”
The timing of Carr’s announcement was also relevant to her decision.
Council is already down one councillor, with OneCity’s Christine Boyle having been elected in last fall’s provincial election as the MLA for Vancouver-Little Mountain. Boyle has since been appointed Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation.
She gave her resignation to the clerk in December.
Carr pointed to the pending byelection to fill Boyle’s seat as an opportune time to resign, and potentially elect another Green party member to city hall. Carr was the first Green party councillor elected in Vancouver.
“My resignation will simply add another council seat to the ballot — it will not cost the taxpayers any additional money,” she said, noting later that the Greens will likely run one candidate so not to compete with OneCity.
“That was important to me. I'll say it now, and I will say it probably many, many times, especially through the byelection, I urge the public to please, please come out and vote in the byelection. Byelections are notorious for not having high voter turnout.”
City staff say the byelection is estimated to cost $2 million, approximately $500,000 more than Vancouver’s last byelection in 2017. The NPA’s Hector Bremner won that byelection after former Vision Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs resigned in July of that year to take a job as chief of staff to then-premier John Horgan.
Only 11 per cent of eligible voters turned out for that byelection.
'Sue Big Oil'
Carr’s announcement leaves Pete Fry as the lone Green councillor in a chamber that is dominated by Sim and his seven ABC Vancouver colleagues, who plan to run at least one candidate in the byelection.
Carr and Fry have been steady critics of ABC Vancouver since Sim and his team won a landslide victory in October 2022. That criticism, they believe, is what lost them duties such as deputy mayor, acting mayor and duty councillor, which come with extra pay.
Carr was also removed by the ABC majority as a Metro Vancouver board director.
Carr said she was disappointed to be removed as council’s representative on the board of the Zero Emissions Innovation Centre, an independent non-profit and charitable organization and member of the Low Carbon Cities Canada network.
ABC Vancouver’s move not to support her “sue Big Oil” motion that would see Vancouver taxpayers contribute one penny each to fight oil companies and voting against the city’s Climate Justice Charter were other frustrations Carr cited.
More recently, the ABC majority voted against her motion titled, “Ensuring councillors’ motions maintain public confidence in the good rule of the city.” She mentioned that vote in the November interview with beat reporters, and again Wednesday.
“I think that this particular ABC party is not engaged in good governance — I think there's a lot of backroom dealings that happen,” she said, citing the unsuccessful move by Sim and some of the ABC councillors to reverse the city’s ban on natural gas for heating and hot water in new homes.
'I'm super bummed'
Fry was at city hall Wednesday for Carr’s announcement and described his colleague as a friend and mentor who recruited him to run with the Greens.
“Obviously, I'm super bummed out to be alone because effectively I will be alone until the outcome of the byelection, no matter how it goes,” Fry said.
“But as a friend to Adriane and Paul [Carr’s husband] and to Adriane's family, I'm very happy for her. It has been kind of miserable at council — I'm not going to lie — and I obviously want what's best for my friend.”
Once council officially receives Carr’s resignation — and enters Boyle’s resignation into the record on the same day — that will trigger the appointment of a chief election officer for a byelection.
Council’s next meeting is Jan. 21.
The chief election officer must set a general voting day no later than 80 days after the election officer is in place, which would set up a vote sometime in April.
'Celebrating the legacy'
ABC Vancouver Coun. Mike Klassen was the lone member of his party to attend Wednesday’s news conference, where reporters asked him questions about Carr’s concern with the mayor and his agenda.
“I'd say today is not a discussion around disagreement — it's about celebrating the legacy of Coun. Carr,” he said.
“I spoke to her before she came down here [to the news conference] today, and I thanked her for her time in service. I used to write about her when I was a columnist, and I remember the one article I wrote about her suggesting that she run for mayor was one of the most popular reads that I ever had.”
Asked why ABC Vancouver needs to field candidates for the vacant council spots when the party already has eight of the 11 seats, Klassen said such a question assumes all party members are “hard wired the same way.”
“The diversity of opinion is already really clear with ABC,” he said. “But I think [the party will use] this opportunity to make sure that we are bringing great people who care about and love this city into the chamber, and able to work with the rest of council and our staff. Because that's what's really important.”
Writing a book
Carr, 72, has spent a great deal of her life in politics, having been a co-founder with her husband Paul George of the Green Party of BC in 1983. She was the party’s leader from 2000-06, and in 2001 became North America’s first Green party leader to be included in a televised leaders’ debate.
George, 84, attended the news conference and heard his wife say she was about as excited on the day she got sworn in as a councillor as to when the couple married and later had two children.
Though she served as leader, she was never elected to the B.C. legislature.
In fact, she had run several times at different levels of government to get elected, but failed until squeaking out a 90-vote victory in the 2011 Vancouver civic election. She previously served under mayors Gregor Robertson and Kennedy Stewart.
Carr raised her profile during her first term at city hall, topping the polls in the 2014 and 2018 elections. At one point in 2018, she was strongly considering a run for mayor after polling showed she would be a favoured choice by many voters.
Vancouver has never had a woman as mayor.
Carr emphasized at Wednesday’s news conference the importance of spending more time with her husband, children and three grandchildren. Carr said she and her husband want to write a book about the history of the couple’s activities within the Green party.
“My husband and I have totally always focused on, ‘How can we make social change happen?” she said, when asked about her next move. “So that's going to translate into something within the public realm. I can't say at this point what that's going to be, but I’m not going to disappear.”
The next general civic election will be held in October 2026.
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