Vancouver Coun. Carr considering early departure from city hall

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Green Coun. Adriane Carr, Vancouver’s longest serving councillor, says she is “seriously considering” resigning before the end of the term, raising the possibility a second council seat could be up for grabs in next spring’s byelection.

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Carr said she plans to take the Christmas holidays to make a final decision, but she is thinking about resigning her seat as soon as January.

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This timing would mean that the civic byelection already slated for next year  to replace OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle — who was elected last month as a B.C. NDP MLA — could also be a chance to find Carr’s replacement.

The byelection is expected to cost the city as much as $2 million, and Carr said she would not consider resigning her post early if there were not already one planned.

Carr’s thinking is driven by both professional and personal considerations, she said. On the personal side, Carr said she wants to be able to spend more time with her husband, Wilderness Committee co-founder Paul George, her children and their partners, and her three grandchildren.

And professionally, Carr said she has been frustrated by being marginalized on Vancouver’s current ABC-majority council, and worries about the reigning party’s “regressive” moves, especially on climate and sustainability issues.

“The tipping point was being removed from the responsibilities I loved,” Carr said, referring to ABC Mayor Ken Sim’s decision last month to strip Carr and other non-ABC councillors of extra roles. Carr will no longer serve as a Metro Vancouver director, part of Metro’s climate action committee, and Vancouver’s representative on the Zero Emissions Innovation Centre, or ZEIC.

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“To be stripped of the Metro position was a big hit, and to be stripped of ZEIC,” she said.

OneCity and ABC leaders have said both parties planned to run candidates for Boyle’s seat. Previously, the Green leaders said they had not decided whether to run a candidate in the byelection, or to support OneCity and avoid splitting the left-leaning vote against the right-leaning ABC. Carr’s departure would open the possibility of the Greens and OneCity each running a candidate — and ABC potentially running two.

Carr has been involved in politics at the municipal, provincial and federal levels for more than four decades.

In 1983, Carr, along with her husband, co-founded the B.C. Green Party, the first in North America, and she served as its inaugural leader. Through the 1980s, ’90s and 2000s, Carr ran unsuccessfully for the Greens at the provincial, federal and municipal levels.

Carr’s first electoral win came in the 2011 Vancouver election, when she won the 10th and final council seat by only 90 votes — or less than 0.5 per cent — and became the Green Party of Vancouver’s first councillor. She went on to become Vancouver’s highest vote-winner in the 2014 election, when she was once again the only Green elected, and again in 2018, when two fellow Greens were elected alongside her.

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In 2022, Carr was elected to her fourth term on council, as one of only three council members not affiliated with the majority ABC party.

Carr, 72, said she expects that if she departs city council, she will not be fully retired.

“I’m going to be open to people approaching me around what I can do on the subjects I’m passionate about,” Carr said.

“Are you kidding? Have a look at my life. I’ve never been not busy.”

dfumano@postmedia.com

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