Niknaz Alemi appears on the City of Vancouver's final 2026 candidate list for Park Board, with ballot number 231. The City records the affiliation as Independent Parks Party.
The campaign video says Alemi has lived in Vancouver for nearly 20 years.
The campaign video says Alemi's interest in protecting nature started with animal welfare and became a career in environmental policy, education and community work, with work in communities in Iran, Costa Rica and Ghana.
The video, titled “Niknaz Alemi for Vancouver Park Board”, was published on August 20, 2026 by Michael Robert Caditz, who is named on the Independent Parks Party website as the person who authorises its material.
Alemi appears on the 2026 ballot at number 231 as an Independent Parks Party candidate for Park Board commissioner. The party has four other candidates on the Park Board ballot.
Alemi's VoteMate profile, a page the site says was submitted by the candidate or their team, gives a longer biography: “I'm a longtime Vancouver resident, a woman, an immigrant, a traveler with a deep love for nature, peoples, communities, animals, and this city.” It says her background is in economics, peace and climate change, and that her work has focused on environmental protection, community development, animal welfare, and the connections between the environment, justice, and peace.
The same profile gives a separate reason for running, in Alemi's own words: she says protecting democracy starts in a person's own neighbourhood, and calls running for Park Board the place where personal responsibility meets personal passion.
On September 26, 2026, the VoteMate profile listed 37 individual promises under named topics, submitted by the candidate or their team. On October 3, 2026 it listed 33. Three items seen on September 26 were no longer shown: simpler Park Board permits for community events and small businesses, environmental assessment of data centres, and economic growth that protects natural assets. Most of the remaining promises concern parks: a parking fee at Spanish Banks, a new expert panel that would have to approve tree removals, a 50 metre pool at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, and monthly public town halls with commissioners.
The Independent Parks Party's Bluesky account posted two short vertical videos naming Alemi, on August 20 and September 11, 2026, announcing her as a nominee and then as officially registered. Both videos carry no caption or transcript and could not be read, so nothing from them beyond the post's own written text is used here.
The City's candidate list gives the Instagram account niknazankin as Alemi's. voche.me read its public posts through Instagram's embed page on October 3, 2026. A post from September 30, 2026, written in English and Persian, marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and is listed under Statements below.
In an article published on August 1, 2025 by Ideas for Peace, a website run by the University for Peace, Alemi writes that she holds a master's degree in Environment, Development and Peace with a focus on climate change, and that after the degree she moved to Northern Ghana as a volunteer animal and crop advisor for a Canadian non-profit group. These are her own statements. voche.me has not checked them with the university or the group, which the article does not name.
Her answers to the Vancouver Public Space Network's Park Board survey, published September 26, 2026, say she came to Vancouver as an immigrant, that her academic and work background is in climate change, and that she supports keeping an independent, elected Park Board. Her answers to the Vote4Tomorrow climate guide say she co-founded a vintage clothing business that resells used clothing and has worked in climate research, communication and education.
Hamyaari Media, a Persian-language outlet in Vancouver, included Alemi in a September 27, 2026 report on Iranian-Canadian candidates. Drawing on her campaign biography, the report says her master's degree is from the University for Peace, and lists her priorities as protecting green space, strengthening the urban forest, keeping recreation fees affordable and stopping commercial uses of parks that are not needed (voche.me's translation from Persian).
voche.me assembled this profile from the official candidate list and the campaign material linked under Sources. The campaign has not been contacted directly by voche.me.
voche.me re-checked this record on September 26, 2026 and again on October 3, 2026. On October 3 it read the City's candidate list, the VoteMate profile, the party's platform page and Bluesky feed, her answers to the Vancouver Public Space Network survey and the Vote4Tomorrow climate guide, her Instagram account, a report by Hamyaari Media, and an article she wrote in 2025.
