Colleen Hardwick: the councillor who said no, and what she promises now

Colleen Hardwick is number 50 on the mayoral ballot, running for TEAM for a Livable Vancouver. She sat on Vancouver City Council from 2018 to 2022, ran for mayor in 2022 and placed third, ran in the 2025 Council by-election and placed third again. She is the only candidate this year who also faced Ken Sim in 2022. This profile sets out what the public record says about her, what her critics have said, and what she is promising. Every fact links to a source at the end of the page. Her full research page is at voche.me/candidates/colleen-hardwick.

A family that has been on the ballot for three generations

Hardwick was born in Vancouver in 1958 and grew up in Kitsilano, where she still lives. Her father, Walter Hardwick, was a geography professor at the University of British Columbia and a City Council member in the early 1970s. He also helped found the original TEAM, The Electors’ Action Movement, in 1968; the party his daughter now leads took the same name. Her grandmother, Iris Hardwick, served on the Park Board in the late 1950s.

Her campaign biography lists a bachelor’s degree in geography and political science from UBC in 1983 and a master’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from UBC in 2011. Those dates come from the campaign and have not been checked with the university.

Film sets, then software

From the mid-1980s to 2000 Hardwick worked in film and television production. She founded New City Productions, which her campaign says produced dozens of projects in the region. Wikipedia’s account, citing contemporary reporting, adds that a later company, MovieSet Inc., raised venture capital and stopped operating in 2011.

In 2010 she founded PlaceSpeak. The company runs an online consultation tool that checks where a participant lives before counting their view, so a city can tell whether the people answering a survey are the people affected. PlaceSpeak received B Corporation certification in 2021. She still describes herself as a frequent speaker on online public engagement.

Four years on Council

Hardwick first ran for Council in 2005 with the Non-Partisan Association and placed thirteenth. In 2018 she ran with the NPA again and won, finishing fifth among the council candidates.

Her term was marked by disagreement with most of her colleagues on housing. She voted against major rezonings and area plans, arguing that high building targets push up land prices. The Vancity Lookout interview in May 2026 counts eleven such votes. Housing advocates took the opposite view. Stuart Smith of Abundant Housing told Vancouver Magazine in 2021 that “you can’t have population growth if you don’t build housing.”

She is credited by the same interview with writing the independent report that led to the City creating its Auditor General’s office, a position that checks how the City spends money.

The disputes that followed her

Abstentions. By the middle of 2021 Hardwick had abstained from 250 Council votes in two and a half years, 150 more than the next councillor, according to Vancouver Magazine. Under Council rules an abstention counts as a yes vote. She defended the practice in a 2021 statement titled “When you doubt the data, abstain.”

The 2019 reconciliation report. In June 2019 she voted against receiving a City report on reconciliation written by the City’s manager of Indigenous relations. She said parts of it distorted the truth and questioned whether a city should fund reconciliation work rather than senior governments. Former councillor Andrea Reimer replied publicly that in nine years of reconciliation work Council had passed every item unanimously until that vote.

Relations with staff and colleagues. Green councillor Adriane Carr told Vancouver Magazine in 2021: “She’s harsh on staff. I don’t appreciate that.” Hardwick has not, in the sources we read, responded to that comment directly.

Leaving the NPA. In April 2021 she resigned from the NPA to sit as an independent, saying the party board had chosen its 2022 mayoral candidate in a private decision that left her, in her words, blindsided. She joined the new TEAM in September 2021 and became its mayoral candidate in March 2022.

None of these is a finding of misconduct. They are votes, statements and political choices that her opponents and allies read differently.

Two defeats, then a third try

In the October 2022 election she received 16,769 votes, 9.97% of the total, behind Ken Sim and Kennedy Stewart. In the April 5, 2025 Council by-election she ran for TEAM and placed third with 17,352 votes, 25.53%, behind COPE’s Sean Orr and OneCity’s Lucy Maloney. She announced her 2026 mayoral run in April 2026.

What TEAM promises for 2026

Her platform is built around giving neighbourhoods more say over what gets built. The main commitments, as published by TEAM:

• Replace the citywide Official Development Plan with neighbourhood plans, and reverse the upzoning around the Broadway corridor.
• Protect older rental buildings and expand co-operative housing.
• Create a renters’ office at City Hall.
• Simplify development permits.
• Limit property tax increases to the rate of inflation.
• Restore parking requirements for new buildings and improve bus access.
• A public safety plan announced September 18, 2026: district-based community policing, a women’s safety lead at the City, and more recovery housing through partnerships.
• A review of public spending in the Downtown Eastside with residents and service providers.

At the September 8 debate at UBC she raised concerns about concentrating services in one part of the city. In September she told CBC News that safety worries in Vancouver are intergenerational, with particular concern about violence against women.

What is still unknown

TEAM has not published how many homes its neighbourhood plans would permit, or what the safety and recovery proposals would cost each year. Her research page lists those as open questions, along with which services would change if taxes rise only with inflation; the campaign has not published answers. A complete record of her 2018 to 2022 votes has not been compiled by voche.me; the counts above come from the sources named.

Poll standings for every candidate are on the polls page. Her research page lists her public schedule, sourced promises and nomination documents.

Image: Alistair Eagle via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped and composed with text by voche.me.