Vancouver-Kensington

Vancouver-Kensington spans a broad swath of central East Vancouver, taking in the Kensington-Cedar Cottage, Sunset, and portions of the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhoods along the Kingsway commercial corridor. It is one of the most linguistically diverse ridings in British Columbia, with a majority of residents reporting a mother tongue other than English. Large Filipino, Chinese, South Asian, and Iranian communities sustain a dense network of restaurants, grocery stores, and small businesses along Kingsway and the surrounding streets.

Mable Elmore, the first Filipino Canadian elected to the BC Legislature, had held the seat since 2009 and was seeking a fifth consecutive term. In 2022, Premier Eby appointed her Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives, a role in which she worked on removing systemic barriers in government services for racialized and Indigenous peoples.

Candidates

Mable Elmore (BC NDP) — The daughter of a Filipino nurse who arrived in Canada in 1965 and an Irish Canadian father, Elmore was born in Langley and raised partly in Manitoba before settling in Vancouver. She spent a decade driving buses for Coast Mountain Bus Company and became deeply involved in the labour movement, serving with CAW Local 111, the Vancouver and District Labour Council, and the BC Federation of Labour. She made history in 2009 as the first Filipino Canadian member of the BC Legislature and has also been one of the openly LGBTQ members of the house.

Syed Mohsin (Conservative Party) — Mohsin is a businessman and owner of Eagle Eye Apparels, which specializes in importing school and work uniforms. He previously served as a Member of Parliament in Bangladesh from 1993 to 1995 and ran as a federal Conservative candidate in Surrey-Newton in 2021. A certified interpreter, he has assisted more than 100 refugee families in settling in British Columbia.

Amy Fox (BC Green Party) also contested the riding.

Local Issues

Access to services in multiple languages remained a practical challenge across the riding's diverse communities. The pandemic had demonstrated how quickly public health communication could break down when directives were not available in Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Punjabi, and Farsi, and the province's Anti-Racism Data Act — introduced during the NDP's term to collect disaggregated demographic data on government services — was in its early implementation phase. Community organizations, including the Collingwood Neighbourhood House and the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House, reported continuing demand for settlement services, language classes, and culturally specific programming, particularly as immigration levels remained high and newcomer families required support navigating housing, health care, and schooling.

Housing affordability along the Kingsway corridor intensified as a concern during the 2020-2024 term. Property values in Kensington-Cedar Cottage and Sunset continued to climb, and renters in the older low-rise apartment buildings lining the side streets — many of them wood-frame structures built in the 1960s and 1970s — faced displacement pressures as owners eyed redevelopment. The NDP's rent control measures and the elimination of the fixed-term lease loophole provided some stability, but advocates warned that the underlying economics of densification along the Kingsway corridor would continue to squeeze low-income tenants. Bill 44's multiplex provisions were viewed with cautious optimism by some families who saw the potential for secondary suites and laneway houses to keep extended family members close, but with concern by others who feared the transformation of quiet residential streets.

The opioid crisis, while most visible in the Downtown Eastside, had a tangible presence in East Vancouver neighbourhoods. Overdose prevention services and harm reduction outreach operated across the riding, and community organizations reported that addiction and mental health challenges were straining local resources. The NDP government's reversal on drug decriminalization — recriminalizing possession in public spaces in mid-2024 after the initial January 2023 exemption proved controversial — reflected a policy debate that played out in communities across the city. Small business owners along Kingsway expressed frustration with visible disorder and property crime, while health advocates argued that criminalization pushed vulnerable people further from the services they needed.