Survey Results!

Below are the complete results of our candidate survey, showing where each responding candidate stands on key health and climate policy questions. We hope this information helps you make an informed decision at the polls.

CAPE BC is not endorsing any specific candidate. Our goal is simply to provide voters with information to evaluate candidates based on their commitment to policies that protect both human health and our environment.

Survey Participation

We invited all candidates to participate in our survey to provide voters with comprehensive information about where they stand on important health and climate issues. Unfortunately, not all candidates chose to respond to our survey. We have included all the responses we received.

Greenspace and Tree Cover

Our question: Access to green space and tree cover protects people from heatwaves and promotes wellness. If elected to serve on the Vancouver City Council, what actions will you take to promote more equitable access to tree cover and green space across the community?

Lucy Maloney: In many parts of Vancouver, especially in South and East Vancouver neighbourhoods, there just aren’t enough trees. Studies show that these neighbourhoods have a hotter surface temperature during the summer, which can be dangerous for people living there. OneCity has fought for more trees in our City and included this commitment in our 2025 platform. I’ll fight to make sure Ken Sim keeps his promise to plant 100,000 more trees to protect neighbourhoods from extreme heat. When planting these trees, we should focus first on neighbourhoods that have the lowest amount of tree canopy and those that experienced the most fatalities during the 2021 heat dome.

Annette Reilly: I will be championing the 3-30-300 Rule for Greener Cities, where there are 3 mature trees visible from every home, 30% tree canopy in every neighbourhood, and 300 meters to the nearest high-quality park or green space.

Guy Dubé: Create social media campaign to truly talk about this need. We need more sheltered spaces for all Vancouver weather. For when it rains but very much for the summer. I am a shade lover and would love to see more chances for us to stay cool

Sean Orr: First to protect the many unprotected parks, parklets, and green spaces not currently protected. Council can do this even without Ken Sim’s antidemocratic removal of the Park Board. Second, I’d reprioritize the budget and re-allocate funding currently gobbled up by the VPD and put it towards funding more green spaces, outdoor pools, playgrounds, and recreation sites. Thirdly, I’d look at community ammentiy contributions and make sure they are used for the public good. Too often we are building density without providing infastructure that keeps communities happy and healthy.

Colleen Hardwick: Access to green space and tree cover is essential to addressing climate resilience and creating a liveable city. It is a TEAM priority to protect and expand trees and green areas on streets, private land and most importantly in parks. Retaining the elected Park Board is required to protect and expand the parks system. Avoid parks from being developed for buildings or paved. Restore the balance between city development and park space to 1.1ha parks to 1000 people. Every neighbourhood should be planned to include more parks, with areas that are already park deficient given priority. Make sure that large site developments provide parks in earlier phases, not at the end where it is decades before the parks are built, like NE False Creek and Jericho Lands. Street trees and wider development side yards is important but should not count as parks like it currently does in the Broadway Plan, this is just landscaping. Parks must be dedicated large areas that support green space, trees and recreational activities. See the TEAM policies on Parks here: https://www.voteteam.ca/parks

Jeanifer Decena: Access to green space and tree cover is central to my vision for Vancouver—Green Spaces for All. It’s not just about trees and parks; it’s about health, safety, and equity. Everyone deserves the chance to step outside and find relief from heat, connect with nature, and feel a sense of belonging in their neighbourhood. If elected to City Council, I will take the following actions:

1. Identify and prioritize underserved areas using mapping data to expand tree canopy and green space in neighbourhoods most impacted by heat and lacking green infrastructure.
2. Secure dedicated funding for equitable greening initiatives, including grants for community groups and Indigenous-led green space projects.
3. Require green space inclusion in all new housing and development projects, especially in high-density and low-income areas.
4. Partner with schools, community centres, and local organizations to create micro-parks, rooftop gardens, and shaded community gathering areas.
5. Launch a city-wide “Green Streets” program, planting more trees along sidewalks, bike lanes, and transit corridors to make green infrastructure part of everyday life.

A truly sustainable and inclusive city starts with ensuring everyone—not just a few—has access to the natural spaces that make Vancouver liveable and vibrant.

Karin Litzcke: More people should have yards where they can plant trees, and buildings should remain small enough to be shaded by trees. All multi-unit buildings should have enough setback to have a yard that can provide cooling space for most of the residents.

Active Transportation Infrastructure

Our question: Do you pledge to support reallocating road space and investing in “all-ages-and-abilities” (AAA) active transportation infrastructure, expanding dedicated bus lanes, and exploring implementation of free transit for teens?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick, Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: All these things would be terribly discriminatory, and the latter would be bad for teens. The disabled and the frail elderly have never been more integrated into society than they are now, when private cars can be used to bring even extremely handicapped people to almost any place or event in the city. To displace car access with infrastructure that demands physical capacity is tremendously exclusionary of precisely the people who might most enjoy those outings. Even if they could take the bus, which most cannot, constraint of car use robs them of important social time with their family or friends who might take them on outings. It doesn’t matter how many dedicated bus lanes there are; some people cannot take the bus, and if cars cannot stop in front of stores due to dedicated bus lanes, then social contact and economic activity is constrained for the most needy. Also, no one is enjoying the bus at present, and many seek to get more access to cars. Still reeling from the isolation of the COVID years, the elderly and handicapped are desperate for the kind of social contact that private car use enables them to have. Policies favouring active transportation also discriminate against those who carry diverse and demanding family responsibilities, who either cannot afford to buy stranger-care, or prefer to provide their own care for their loved ones. Being able to move family members around, even to go grocery shopping with twin babies in tow, is an inalienable right, and simply impossible to accomplish on a bicycle. Modern life, where the chickens are not just running around outside waiting to be killed and cooked for dinner, requires energy-consuming transportation of some sort. Teens are living with the lowest level of financial responsibility they will ever have. They have their housing, clothing, food, and entertainment; their heat and electricity, and their transportation, already paid for by their parents, to the extent they may not even know that their family has these expenses. To best prepare teens for the responsibilities of adulthood, they should at least learn about the expenses of adult life, and specific to this question, that transportation is not free. Even if it is not their own money that they put into the fare box, it is useful for them to learn to plan to pay for transportation as they use it.

Zero Carbon Step Code

Our question: In 2024, Vancouver City Council voted to require new buildings to meet the top levels of the Zero Carbon Step Code, which restricts the use of gas for heating and hot water in new buildings. Do you pledge to maintain this policy?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Jeanifer Decena

Colleen Hardwick: Other: Yes to keeping new builds zero emissions, but also need to do a review of the infrastructure capacity and ensure that the city has the ability to service this.

Karin Litzcke: City council was outside of its legal jurisdiction to try to constrain access to safe and available forms of energy for a defined subset of the population, in my opinion. This opens the city to human rights complaints.

Electric Heat Pumps

Our question: Building emissions account for 55% of Vancouver’s carbon pollution. Do you pledge to support regulations that gradually upgrade existing buildings with electric heat pumps?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick, Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: It would produce far more carbon to build so many unnecessary heat pumps, and the disposal of replaced appliances would create an unnecessary environmental burden. Also, increasing the electrical burden that Vancouver puts on the grid is not sustainable. It is far better if a good number of buildings continue to use gas. I see that you are worried about carbon. I am not. I am aware that carbon fosters plant growth, and I am in favour of increased vegetation. Even if carbon were a pollutant, which it is not, Vancouver has a negligible effect on carbon output, as our total output is miniscule compared with China, for example. The urge to control carbon overlooks the sun’s effect in escalating atmospheric carbon, which we cannot control.

Minimum Cooling Standards

Our question: Extreme heat events are increasingly dangerous for Vancouver residents. Will you commit to implementing minimum cooling standards in residential buildings by amending the Standards of Maintenance Bylaw to work towards ensuring indoor temperatures do not exceed 26° Celsius?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick

Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: This sounds like an unnecessarily fascistic approach to solving a simple problem, although insufficient cooling could certainly be added to the bylaw. But it would be reasonable for the city to supply small mobile air conditioner units to residents who are at risk. What I do think is important is easy egress in hot conditions, and available gardens. This is one reason I oppose dense tower construction.

Regional Climate Policy Coordination and Air Contaminant Regulations

Our question: If elected to Vancouver City Council and appointed to serve on the Metro Vancouver Board, do you pledge to support maintaining regional climate policy coordination services, as well as regulations to reduce health-harming air contaminants from boilers and process heaters at Metro Vancouver?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick, Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: This question mixes different types of problems to the benefit of neither. Air quality merits serious attention. Clean air is one of the features that people from dirtier countries, like some of the big Chinese cities, come here for. Regulations are certainly required, but are rarely a whole answer, since inspection, enforcement, negotiation, and creative problem-solving may also be required. The pollution that Vancouver sends east into the valley should be mitigated. Climate policy is another kettle of fish. Such policy is invariably ideological, and the strategies devised to mitigate it are usually inconsiderate to the point of being, again, fascistic.

Phase Out Burning of Garbage

Our question: If elected to Vancouver City Council and appointed to serve on the Metro Vancouver Board, will you call for a comprehensive study of options to phase out burning of garbage in waste-to-energy facilities?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick, Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: It would be useful for all city residents to learn more about where their waste goes and how it is handled. I have read your position here: https://cape.ca/press_release/metro-vancouver-must-shut-down-the-burnaby-waste-to-energy-facility-to-meet-its-environmental-and-financial-goals/ and find it informative and persuasive. Waste reduction is an interest I have pursued since 1990, and I recognize the complexity of the trade-offs that are necessary to handle the garbage that such a large city creates. The need to reduce waste produced in the region is a good reason to demolish fewer buildings, and to not densify, since more residents will put more pressure on the waste management system. I would not commit to phasing out local burning if the alternative is that, for example, our plastic is being dumped in rivers in the third world, and ending up in the ocean. I believe in taking care of our own garbage in the most sustainable possible way, not foisting the problem off on others.

Fossil Fuel Advertising Ban

Our question: Will you vote in support of a ban on fossil fuel advertising in municipal facilities, similar to restrictions on tobacco advertising?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Colleen Hardwick, Jeanifer Decena

Karin Litzcke: Restrictions on tobacco advertising (for which I advocated in the 80s) were necessary because the advertising revenue was constraining the publication of information about the dangers of smoke, and of second-hand smoke – not because smoking was “bad,” per se. Fossil fuels are not “bad” in any case. While clean fossil fuel use is desirable, shaming fossil fuel use is not. Every force constraining fossil fuel use ends up creating human suffering, and ends up causing a boomerang effect that is worse – for example, getting people to not own cars now has us gridlocked in Uber traffic as every errand consumes twice as much gas as owning and using a personal car. The demonization of fossil fuels is not making the world a better place. Slavery, working animals, and wood-burning are at higher levels than ever. https://www.city-journal.org/article/energy-transition-green-new-deal?skip=1

Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) and Planning for Extreme Heat and Air Quality Mitigation Policy

Our question: Building on the City of Vancouver’s climate emergency declaration, do you commit to fully implementing and funding the Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) and the Planning for Extreme Heat and Air Quality Mitigation Policy, including identifying new revenue sources where necessary?

Lucy Maloney, Annette Reilly, Guy Dubé, Sean Orr, Jeanifer Decena

Colleen Hardwick: TEAM is dedicated to meaningful climate resilience policies, and will ensure that action plans are effective, avoiding green-washing, and are properly funded. See TEAM’s Climate Resilience policies here: https://www.voteteam.ca/climate-change

Karin Litzcke: Again, I do not think it helps inform voters if issues of differing urgency and validity are mixed in one question. Protestations of Climate Emergencies are generally overblown, sometimes to the extent of being ignorant or misinformed. Even if they deal in accurate forecasts, which most do not, using such a purported emergency to control society is a form of disaster capitalism, and should not be acquiesced to by elected officials. In discussing “extreme heat” events, it should always be noted that cold kills far more people than heat does, although fortunately we do not have much extreme cold in Vancouver. I favour a responsive policy that provides the simplest, most direct and accessible solutions for both heat and cold. The dangers of extreme cold are a good reason for making sure gas heating remains broadly available and accessible (Vancouver should, for example, oppose the national push for “high efficiency” furnaces, and make sure that simple, low efficiency furnaces remain available so that people do not need $10,000 to install a complicated furnace system that does not work as reliably as a basic gas furnace). I have already addressed air quality mitigation somewhat. As for new revenue, there are often solutions available that do not require new revenue to build bureaucratic empires, and those are always preferable – again, for example, allowing the use of gas rather than forcing everyone to retrofit to electric heat. If heat pumps are wonderful, then they will eventually dominate through the exercise of consumer choice. If they have to be forced on people, then they are not a better choice.