Cities

Vancouver's youngest-ever councillor vows to prioritize public transit

The 21-year-old COPE councillor-elect says their experience as a transit user will shape their work on council.

By Erin Kowalski, Editor-in-Chief
October 29, 2026

VANCOUVER · Solomon Yi-Kieran will become Vancouver's youngest-ever city councillor when sworn in on Nov. 2. The 21-year-old, who turned 21 the day before the municipal election, won a council seat with the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) with just over 60,000 votes. Yi-Kieran campaigned heavily on improving public transit, a passion they attribute to being a transit user and having a father who drives buses and HandyDart. They said they have not seen transit prioritized by elected officials, attributing this to most officials not being transit users themselves.

"Most elected officials [follow] the idea that it's only going to be the wealthy homeowners who vote, so they don't care about getting transit riders to come out and vote," Yi-Kieran said. "They don't care about actually making those promises and making those improvements." Yi-Kieran said their campaign slogan, "We didn't start this class war, but we're gonna win it," reflects a desire for a government that works for all Vancouverites. "We need to be a government that isn't going to just serve the richest of the rich, the mansion-owning backers, the big money interests," they said.

Yi-Kieran said they want to quickly deliver tangible transit improvements. A short-term goal is ensuring every bus stop in Vancouver has a covered bench. "We're in a city where it rains 40 per cent of the year," they said. "Forty-one per cent of seniors use transit, so it's an accessibility issue." They also want to implement priority bus lanes on several major streets, a measure already approved by council but not yet rolled out. "It is important that we show people that after years of government delays, after years of governments being slow to act, we're actually able to make tangible changes," Yi-Kieran said.

Long-term, Yi-Kieran wants to work with Mayor-elect Pete Fry, TransLink and other municipalities on broader transit service improvements. Their advocacy includes the SkyTrain extension to the University of British Columbia, a project they championed as a UBC student. Yi-Kieran led a campaign for the UBC SkyTrain that gathered 15,000 petition signatures and included a council motion and a protest marking an 18-year delay. Your Space Hamilton reported in October that another party also promised to finish the SkyTrain extension to UBC.

Yi-Kieran grew up in both Canada and China, spending time in several cities, which they said influenced their worldview and decision to study history at UBC. "It led me to want to know how the world came to be the way that it was," they said. "Studying history also became a little bit of an idea of studying how things can be different and how things can change." Their involvement in student politics at UBC, including a run for student union vice-president, built momentum they later channeled into the council campaign.

COPE's campaign relied on a strong social media presence to inform voters. "You can't expect people to, when they have busy lives, busy schedules, they're working jobs, they're taking care of their family, to also have the time to research 55 candidates," Yi-Kieran said. The party also organized town halls on issues like AI data centres and policy conferences for public feedback. Since the Oct. 17 election, Yi-Kieran said COPE councillors-elect have gotten straight to work on research and meetings. "I feel like we are really jumping into it," they said. "I feel very optimistic about this council's ability to work together."

With files from Daily Hive