COPE’s members now have to decide how to use their electoral mandate. They can negotiate for improvements inside the council while continuing to organize tenants, workers, and neighborhoods to demand more from the new administration. The two approaches can complement and strengthen one another: COPE’s ability to mobilize people outside city hall may determine how much it can achieve inside.
The challenge will be to keep the routines of municipal government from displacing the organizing that made the victory possible. Sean Orr, first elected in a 2025 by-election, has demonstrated that he can be a serious legislator as well as an organizer; COPE’s new batch of councilors can draw on his experience as they orient themselves to the workings of city hall.
The coalition also faces a profound public safety challenge. Ken Sim’s council majority put two nonbinding plebiscites on the ballot: one asked whether the city should toughen laws against open-air hard drug use in public spaces; the other asked whether the city should push the province to create a secure medical facility with voluntary as well as one-hundred-plus involuntary beds. Voters backed both questions by roughly 68 percent.
COPE and the Greens opposed putting the question to a vote, but the results largely refute any claim that the new progressive majority has a clear mandate to counter these proposals. It is very likely that some of the same people who voted for COPE voted yes to the plebiscites. Vancouver has been at the center of Canada’s overdose crisis, and the incoming council will be responsible for addressing conflicting expectations about the best way to respond to visible street-level poverty, public drug use, and complex mental health and addiction challenges.
COPE will have to demonstrate that an approach rooted in housing, harm reduction, and public services can address residents’ concerns without abandoning its commitments to the people most affected by the crisis. The election does not resolve these questions. It makes them more urgent.
One part of COPE’s rebuild was reconnecting members with the party’s history. Organizers made a slideshow of its victories since its founding in the 1960s, giving members a sense of that history and purpose. From declaring Vancouver a nuclear-weapon-free zone to Sean Orr establishing an arts and culture land trust, COPE exists in a long line of struggles for better housing, care, and socialism in the city.
On October 17, the members gathered in a packed auditorium had good reason to pop champagne bottles, sing, and celebrate. They had done something many thought impossible. Socialism was back in Vancouver.