Colleen Hardwick

Colleen Hardwick (born September 17, 1958) is a Canadian politician, media executive and producer in Vancouver, British Columbia, who served on Vancouver City Council from 2018 to 2022. Hardwick is the daughter of former Vancouver alderman Walter Hardwick and the granddaughter of former Vancouver park commissioner Iris Hardwick.

Early career

Hardwick won a 1997 "Forty under 40" award in entrepreneurship from Business in Vancouver.

Hardwick developed MovieSet Inc., a platform to monetize movies under production. The company raised Series A venture capital, but ceased operations in 2011 following the financial crisis.

In 2010, she founded PlaceSpeak, a location-based civic engagement platform designed to consult with people within specific geographic boundaries. PlaceSpeak received B Corporation certification in 2021.

Political career

Hardwick announced her candidacy for Vancouver City Council in the summer of 2005. She campaigned with the Non-Partisan Association (NPA) against a proposal to use assets from Vancouver's Property Endowment fund to build housing that would not yield a return on the investment, claiming her Vision Vancouver opponents "don't even understand how market housing works." Hardwick was endorsed by Vancouver Sun’s editorial board ahead of the November election. With ten councillors to be elected, she placed thirteenth.

In 2018, again running under the NPA banner, Hardwick came fifth and was elected to the council. On a council with no party majority, she frequently questioned some of the initiatives and policies brought forth, and regularly voiced concerns about what she calls "scope-creep" where the municipal government dedicates resources to issues traditionally in the realm of other levels of government.

Hardwick was elected as a member of the NPA but resigned from that organization in April 2021 to sit as an independent councillor. Five months later, Hardwick announced her affiliation with a new civic party, TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, and on March 13, 2022 was acclaimed as TEAM's mayoral candidate for the 2022 municipal election. Hardwick came in third in the mayoral race with 9.97% of the vote.

While on council, Hardwick sought the establishment of an independent auditor general for Vancouver.

Stances on housing and upzoning Hardwick opposes upzoning to increase land inflation. She has argued that upzonings and greater density have greatly exacerbated Vancouver's housing affordability crisis, and that increasing revenue through boosted housing supply is akin to a Ponzi scheme.

In 2019, Hardwick voted against allowing a 5-storey apartment building (where one-fifth of the units were below market rates) in Kitsilano, arguing "why are we promoting development to the detriment of our residents?"

In 2022, she voted against a major rezoning plan for the Broadway corridor that permitted 40 storey mixed-use developments near SkyTrain stations, as well as the replacement of older, small 10-unit buildings with 15-20 storey buildings. She argued the added housing supply would lead to increased house prices. During her 2022 election campaign, she campaigned on spending $500 million toward building co-op housing and on creating neighbourhood-specific zoning plans.

In 2022, as a city councillor during a re-zoning hearing for a 12-tower housing project by MST Development Corporation (a partnership of the Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation) on land owned by it and Canada Lands Company (a federal crown corporation), Hardwick asked the question "How do you reconcile Indigenous ways of being with 18-storey high-rises?" Hardwick voted in favour of the re-zoning, commenting, "It is moving forward in the exact right direction that reconciliation was intended to be."

Electoral record