Your council vote also picks Vancouver's 7 seats on the Metro Vancouver board

There is no Metro Vancouver race on the October 17 ballot. The regional board that runs the region's drinking water, sewage treatment and garbage system is made up of people who were elected to their own city councils. In Vancouver, that means the council you elect this month will choose 7 of its members to speak and vote for the city at the regional table. This guide explains how those seats are filled, how much weight they carry, and where TransLink fits.

What Metro Vancouver is

Metro Vancouver describes itself as "a federation of 21 municipalities, one electoral area, and one treaty First Nation". It says it delivers:

• drinking water,
• sewers and wastewater treatment,
• solid waste management, which covers garbage and recycling,
• a regional parks system, and
• affordable housing.

It also regulates air quality and plans for urban growth. Its 2026 factsheet on board structure says that every day, "over three million people", more than half of the people in British Columbia, rely on these services.

Metro Vancouver is four separate legal bodies, and each has its own board of directors. They are the Metro Vancouver Regional District, the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District, the Greater Vancouver Water District and the Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation. The housing corporation has the same members as the regional district. Metro Vancouver's 2026 factsheet on its boards says the water district has 38 directors, because Bowen Island, Lions Bay and White Rock are not members of it.

How Vancouver's directors are chosen

Metro Vancouver's board page says its directors "are members of your Municipal or First Nation council who have been appointed to the Board by their respective councils."

The law behind this is the Local Government Act. Section 198(1) says each municipal director is "appointed at pleasure by the council from among its members". "At pleasure" means the council can replace a director at any time. Only a sitting member of council can be appointed.

Section 198(2) says a director's term ends at the earliest of three points:

1. another director takes their place,
2. the director stops being a member of council, or
3. November 30 in the year of a general local election.

So every Vancouver seat on the board ends by November 30, 2026, and the new council makes fresh appointments. Section 200 also lets a council name alternate directors, who are councillors that vote in place of an absent director.

How many seats and votes Vancouver has

The regional board has 41 directors. Metro Vancouver says each director gets "one vote for every 20,000 people" in their municipality, "up to a total of five votes".

The steps come from sections 196 and 197 of the Act:

1. Divide the city's population by the voting unit of 20,000, and round up to the next whole number. That gives the city's votes.
2. Divide those votes by 5, and round up. That gives the number of directors.
3. The council shares the votes among its directors as evenly as possible, with a gap of no more than 1 between any two.

Metro Vancouver's board page uses a population of 663,894 for Vancouver. Divided by 20,000 that is 33.19, which rounds up to 34 votes. Divided by 5 that is 6.8, which rounds up to 7 directors. The board page lists 6 Vancouver directors with 5 votes each and 1 with 4.

Using the population figures on the same page and the same formula, we count 145 votes on the board in all. Vancouver's 34 are the largest block, 23.4 percent of the total. Surrey is next, with 29.

When the weighted votes are used

In most regional districts, directors cast one vote each on many questions, and the weighted votes apply only to certain money and service decisions. Metro Vancouver has its own rule. Section 211 of the Act says that for Metro Vancouver, on "all resolutions and every reading and the adoption, amendment or repeal of all bylaws", each director votes with the number of votes assigned by population, unless another rule says otherwise.

In practice, how many votes Vancouver's 7 directors hold matters on almost every decision the board makes.

The regional growth plan

One of the board's largest jobs is planning. Metro 2050 is the regional growth strategy. Metro Vancouver calls it "the region's long-term plan for managing anticipated population, housing, and job growth". It says the plan was adopted by the regional board in February 2023, after every member jurisdiction approved it.

Metro 2050 keeps urban growth inside an urban containment boundary, a line on the map that separates land for towns and cities from farms, rural areas and parks. Each city shows how its own plans fit the regional one in a document called a regional context statement.

The board may get smaller

Metro Vancouver's 2026 factsheet says a governance review by Deloitte Canada, received in 2025, made 47 recommendations, and 20 had been completed. The factsheet says the regional board "will grow to over 50 people" within ten years, and that Deloitte recommended a smaller board. Options include changing the number of directors and adding appointed directors from outside council. The factsheet says any change to the law would need the Province.

The Local Government Act, in its version current to September 22, 2026, still sets the rules described above.

TransLink and the Mayors' Council

Transit is run by a separate body, TransLink. Its Mayors' Council on Regional Transportation is set up by section 208 of the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Act. The members are:

• the mayor of each municipality in TransLink's service region,
• the head of each treaty First Nation whose lands are in that region, and
• the Electoral Area A director.

The mayor sits on this council because of the office.

TransLink says the Mayors' Council approves long-term transportation plans, 10-year investment plans, major projects, and "regional funding and borrowing limits". It also appoints most members of the TransLink board, from nominees put forward by an independent screening panel.

Voting here is weighted too, with a different formula. Section 211(2) gives each member "one vote for every 20 000, or portion of that number" of their municipality's population, as counted in the most recent Census of Canada. There is no limit of 5, so all of Vancouver's votes are cast by one person. A few decisions listed in the Act use one vote per member instead.

A mayor who cannot attend can send a member of their own council as a delegate for that meeting, under section 210(3). Every member swears an oath to "consider the interests of the transportation service region as a whole".

What this means for your ballot

• The council race decides the pool of people Vancouver can send to the Metro Vancouver board. See who is running on our candidates page and compare them on the compare page.
• The mayor's race decides who casts Vancouver's votes on TransLink's plans.
• Our guide to marking the Vancouver ballot covers what the ballot itself contains.

Metro Vancouver, TransLink and the Local Government Act have the final word on these rules. If anything here disagrees with metrovancouver.org, translink.ca or bclaws.gov.bc.ca, those sources are correct.