We are Jon Girard and Mayeli Alvarez. We are the two people who took the City of Vancouver and the Park Board to the Supreme Court of British Columbia over the Vancouver Aquatic Centre. On October 17, we are both standing for election to the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation, endorsed by TEAM for a Livable Vancouver.
We are not politicians. Neither of us has ever run for anything. Fourteen months ago we started asking questions about this project because the answers were not adding up, and we assumed somebody in authority would look at what we found and fix it.
Nobody did. So we are going to the table ourselves.
What We Did Before There Was an Election On the Line
- Built a grassroots campaign into an incorporated non-profit society and raised more than $100,000 from residents who had no obligation to give a dollar.
- Retained counsel and filed a judicial review in the Supreme Court of British Columbia — argued through a full day of hearing in June, in front of a packed gallery.
- Filed over 130 Freedom of Information requests, read everything that came back, and published what mattered, because none of it was reaching the public on its own.
- Ran the governance, the books and the budget of a litigation campaign funded entirely by public donations, where every dollar belonged to someone else.
Unpaid. On top of full-time work. On a file with no career upside — which, until roughly now, was the point.
Ask any candidate what they were doing about this before an election made it convenient. We have an answer, and it is a matter of public record.
We have also read the capital reports, the cost estimates, the rejected design options and the internal correspondence on the largest aquatic project in this city's recent history. Most candidates start learning parks capital planning and internal process after October 18th. We already know it.
What We Will Do
1. Halt the Aquatic Centre project and reopen the planning. A motion to stop it, with the full option set back on the table in public — including the options eliminated behind closed doors before commissioners ever saw them. The outcome we are committed to is specific: a ten-lane, fifty-metre public pool built and operating at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre site.
2. Public consultation that decides something. Today, consultation happens after the decision. The internal record on this project shows the public treated as a hurdle to be managed — a group to be "socialized" once staff had landed on an answer. We would invert it: on any project of significant magnitude, the public chooses the shape of the facility before design work begins — a recorded choice among real, costed options, at the front of the process. Commissioners are elected. They work for the public. It does not run the other way, and it has not felt that way in years.
3. A capital transparency standard in year one. Every major capital decision tabled with the full option set — including what staff recommend against — the cost estimate behind each one, and a written reason each rejected option was rejected. Published before the vote, not disclosed afterwards under a court order. Had that rule existed in 2025, this argument would have happened in a committee room instead of a courtroom.
4. No closure without a plan in hand. No facility closes without a written interim programming plan delivered to affected user groups first. Britannia's clubs got roughly eighteen days' notice. That should be impossible.
5. The Aquatic Centre cannot become the template. Kitsilano Pool is next — the Park Board Chair has put that project at an estimated $300 million or more. Kerrisdale has been shut since January. Britannia closes in the new year. Renfrew is over sixty years old and still waiting. Hastings and Kensington sit behind them.
That is a choice. Not an accident.
Every one of those buildings belongs to the neighbourhood that uses it. And every one of them will be decided by the same process that produced a $175-million failure — a project delivering a pool half the length of the one it replaced, with no published study of the alternatives. Not one.
A fair, accountable and transparent Park Board — one that consults properly and treats the public's authority as real rather than procedural — is the only thing standing between those communities and a repeat. Vancouver needs more pools and community centres. Let's build them.
Check the Record, Not the Speech
For the next seven weeks you will hear warm words about swimming pools from a lot of people, including some who have already sat at this table.
We are not going to characterise anyone's motives. We don't have to. The votes are public. Every commissioner's vote on this project is recorded. Every motion gutted before it reached the table is recorded. Who moved to pause demolition and who did not is recorded.
Before you vote, look up how the people asking for your vote actually voted. That is the standard we would ask you to apply to anyone — including us, four years from now.
Why TEAM
TEAM is the only party that put the answer in writing. Its Better Parks and Recreation for Everyone platform, released August 17, commits to retaining a world-class 50-metre pool at the Aquatic Centre and to funding the Park Board's capital plan at $739 million over four years, including $496 million for recreation facilities. No other party has made that commitment.
The deeper reason is structural. TEAM's founding position is an independent, elected Park Board — it defended the elected Board before the abolition attempt was abandoned, when defending it still cost something. TEAM's commissioners are independent, and that independence is the mechanism that makes the platform above real rather than decorative. We have spent fourteen months documenting what happens when commissioners vote the way a party tells them to instead of the way the evidence points. We are not going to become the thing we spent a year exposing.
We also support Colleen Hardwick for Mayor. That is our own assessment from our own dealings: honest, direct, consistent, and willing to engage with the objective evidence and substance of an important issue head on, rather than solely the politics of it. We firmly believe Colleen has what it takes to tackle Vancouver's toughest issues efficiently, and with integrity.
Pictured: TEAM Park Board Candidates w/ Colleen Hardwick. Left to right: Wah Gee, Colleen Hardwick (Mayoral Candidate), Jon Girard (Director, POVACS), Mayeli Alvarez (Director, POVACS), Allan Fawley
One Seat Is Not Enough
There are seven Park Board commissioners. One commissioner can move a motion and force a recorded vote. One commissioner cannot pass anything.
Reopening this project takes votes at that table. That means electing us both, and electing the other independent TEAM commissioners alongside us. That is not a loyalty pitch — it is how a seven-member board works.
If you want this reversed, the arithmetic is the campaign.
Where the Case Stands
Nothing today changes the litigation. Our judicial review was argued June 19 and the decision remains reserved. We will not speculate on the outcome or comment on the merits while the Court has it.
The court and the ballot do different work, and both are necessary. A court rules on what was lawful — whether a borrowing authority approved by voters can be spent the way it is being spent. That case had to be brought, it was right to bring, and it is not finished. But no court decides what this city builds next, or who sits at the table when the next decision is made. Only voters do that.
We are taking both routes because neither one is sufficient on its own.
What We Need From You
General Voting Day is Saturday, October 17, 2026.
- Vote all the way down the ballot to Park Board. It is the section most people leave blank. It is the section that decides this.
- Share this with anyone who swims, whose kids swim, or who has watched a pool close in this city — and with anyone who uses a community centre, a gym or a rink, or who simply wants a Park Board that is fair, transparent and answerable to the people who elect it.
- Ask candidates the specific question: will you vote to halt the current Aquatic Centre project and reopen the planning for a ten-lane, fifty-metre pool? Get it in writing. "I support aquatics" is not an answer.
- Talk to your neighbours. We have no machine behind us. What we have is people, which is how we got this far — and we need more of them. The other campaigns have money, mailing houses and organizations built years ago to win elections. We have a true story and the people willing to tell it. So tell it: to your neighbours, your building, your club, your lane, your parents' group. Every conversation you have is one they had to pay for. Together, we can win this.
- Follow our campaign trail on Instagram. Jon Girard: @votejonforpb, Mayeli Alvarez: @votemayeli
For journalists: We're available for interviews about the campaign and the documentary record behind it. Click here to email us. We will not comment on the merits of the reserved petition.
Last Updated: September 1st, 2026
Jon Girard and Mayeli Alvarez Candidates for Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation
Jon Girard and Mayeli Alvarez are directors of Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society. The Society is a non-partisan non-profit organization dedicated to democratic accountability and voter rights. This article is published by Jon Girard and Mayeli Alvarez in their personal capacity as candidates.
