On June 9th 2025, Vancouver mayor Ken Sim’s former chief of staff, Kareem Allam, announced his plan to run for mayor against his ex-boss in the October 2026 municipal election.
Then on July 3rd, the Vancouver Liberal Electors Association (known as the Vancouver Liberals) was registered with Elections BC as a new civic party. Kareem Allam is the only current contender to be their mayoral candidate.
These are the final nails in Mayor Sim’s political coffin.
Kareem Allam was Ken Sim’s campaign manager in the October 2022 municipal election. He did the impossible then, electing Sim as mayor.
A few months later, on February 6th 2023, Kareem Allam reportedly quit his job as chief of staff for the erratic mayor. Rumour had it that when Mayor Sim would propose cockamamie ideas, he did not like being given the straight goods by Allam.
Things went downhill for the mayor from then on.
Sim’s first year in office ended with his ABC party losing their 6-1 majority on the Park Board when three of the commissioners were dropped by Sim as they would not obey his dictate to support his about-face and eliminate the Park Board.
Sim’s losing streak continued in 2024 when in August the ABC-elected chair of the Vancouver School Board, Victoria Jung, resigned from the party rather than accept the mayor’s attempt to silence the city’s Integrity Commissioner.
Not content with what he had already done to undermine his ABC party, the mayor celebrated Valentine’s Day 2025 by expelling City Councillor Rebecca Bligh from the party. He alleged that she was not a team player. In the mayor’s eyes, that clearly means that you fail to obediently follow his orders.
Ken Sim really had nothing to brag about. Despite being well paid to do the work, in his first 14 months as mayor, Sim missed 222 out of 777 City Council votes. He followed this up on January 29, 2025 by announcing that effective immediately he would be boycotting all Metro Vancouver meetings, saying that “Metro Vancouver’s governance is broken” and that their “costs to taxpayers and Vancouverites are out of control.“ This was in spite of the fact that he had been delegated by Council to represent Vancouver at Metro Vancouver.
Sim’s judgement has been questionable throughout his term. He became notorious for wearing casual clothes and sneakers to even formal occasions, including the 2024 Remembrance Day ceremony. And despite city hall already having an employee workout space in the building, he converted a city hall boardroom to set up his own private gym.
Questions have now arisen as to whether the mayor may have been stopped by police for driving after drinking. In late 2023, developer and ex-political commentator Alex Tsakumis claimed on social media that VPD officers had stopped Sim on West 4th Avenue earlier that year, Sim was let off, and that VPD had covered up the incident . A subsequent external investigation concluded that the allegation was baseless. That report has remained secret.
Tsakumis’ source was Kareem Allam, who said when interviewed that he had been informed of the alleged incident by a staff person in the mayor’s office. Allam also reported to Global News that he had been fired shortly after the event, which contradicted earlier claims that he had quit.
On May 23, 2025, Ken Sim filed a civil lawsuit in BC Supreme Court against Allam and Tsakumis over their alleged defamatory comments related to the reported incident. CBC reported that the civil lawsuit says that Allam told the false story to Tsakumis with the intent that Tsakumis would publish the information. It asserts that they made the comments “with malice, knowing them to be false, or in reckless disregard to the truth of the statements,”
Allam and Tsakumis have both filed responses to the lawsuit. Allam has accepted that aspects of the claim are true but denies they amount to defamation, saying his concern was with the alleged cover-up, not the drinking. Tsakumis states that his social media posts were justified and not defamatory, and that they were in public interest. He also alleges that Sim has had a history of drinking at public events.
I have long predicted that Ken Sim will only be a one-term mayor. Recent events certainly support that opinion.
On Saturday April 5, 2025, the citizens of Vancouver voted in a byelection to fill two city council vacancies. COPE’s Sean Orr and OneCity’s Lucy Maloney won. ABC’s two candidates, Ralph Kaisers, and Jaime Stein, did not come within a country mile of winning. Throughout the campaign, presumably because of public anger at the mayor, they boycotted every all-candidate meeting. As journalist Kirk LaPointe wryly noted in his Business in Vancouver column right after the byelection, ABC turned out to stand for A Brutal Clobbering.
With Kareen Allam now launching the Vancouver Liberals, it will be only a matter of time — I predict a short period of time — before ABC civic politicians leave the sinking ABC ship and its erratic captain to join the new party. If/when just two more ABC city councillors part ways with the mayor, he will lose his majority on council.
Kareem Allam is a strong communicator who has already demonstrated his ability to clearly and convincingly articulate why Ken Sim is not fit for the mayor’s office. A new mayor will be elected on Saturday, October 17, 2026.
Daily atmospheric CO2 [Courtesy of CO2.Earth]
Latest daily total (July 9, 2025): 428.43ppm
One year ago (July 9, 2024): 425.81ppm
Subscribe to Tim Louis
Keep up to date Tim's latest posts.