Bob Mackin
“Vote Local Vote Curran,” declare the all-caps signs, copying Elections Canada’s black-on-yellow scheme, for Conservative candidate Stephen Curran. The lawyer is trying again to flip the riding blue in the Aug. 31 by-election.
Liberal Jonathan Wilkinson won a fourth consecutive election since 2015 by defeating Curran with a 16,568-vote margin last year.
Wilkinson had stints as Justin Trudeau’s environment, fisheries and energy minister, but quit in June to become Canada’s Ambassador to the European Union. Prime Minister Mark Carney parachuted his deputy chief of staff and 2025 national campaign co-chair Braeden Caley into the riding and called the by-election on July 26. The local Liberal association was not consulted.
Conservative campaign signs at Mackay Creek in North Vancouver. (Mackin)
“On Saturday July 18, all of us as [Liberal Party of Canada] members received an email indicating the appointment of Caley as the selected candidate for the North Vancouver-Capilano riding,” said Sid Mirhashemy of North Vancouver in a letter to the North Shore News. ”I find Caley’s assertion that no other candidates came forward insulting. How could someone challenge him if there was no official nomination held?”
Caley grew up in Richmond. Except for a year in Carney’s office, he spent the last decade in Ottawa in Liberal Party headquarters and at the party’s Canada 2020 thinktank. Elections Canada records, inspected by theBreaker, show Caley now calls a rental apartment tower near North Vancouver city hall his home. He did not list a local phone number in his candidature file.
Curran, who joined a North Vancouver law firm in 2021, owns a $3.3 million-assessed house in Central Lonsdale, less than a kilometre west of Caley’s residence.
Further west, on the other side of Mahon Park, the Green Party’s Shelley Luce owns a 1916-built house worth $1.38 million. The London, Ont.-raised environmental scientist was most recently the Sierra Club’s director of campaigns, after working for environmental groups in California.
The NDP’s Stephen Tweedale works daytimes in NDP North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Susie Chant’s office and rents a suite in a $1.7 million Westview house.
Two candidates do not live in the riding. Jeff Monds, a customer relationship manager and member of the Libertarian Party, lists a 2.37-acre vacant lot in Coquitlam as his address. Coquitlam is also home of his campaign office.
Mechanical engineer Ehsan Arjmand of the People’s Party of Canada is a resident of a Lynnmour strata tower in the neighbouring Burnaby North-Seymour riding.
Ballot box issue or not?
It is up to the voters to decide if residency matters. Parachute candidates are legal — a practice almost as old as Canada itself — and the three major national parties have taken advantage of the lack of rule.
Canada’s first Prime Minister, and first Conservative leader, John A. Macdonald originally represented Kingston, Ont. But, from 1878 to 1882, he was the MP for Victoria, which he had never visited.
The father of medicare, Tommy Douglas, was the Premier of Saskatchewan under the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation banner before becoming the federal leader. He lost in Regina City in 1962, but got into the House of Commons in Burnaby-Coquitlam.
Braeden Caley graduated from Gregor Robertson’s Vancouver city hall to Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party head office in 2016.
Similarly, Ontario provincial politician and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh became an MP in a 2019 by-election in Burnaby South.
During the 2025 election in Vancouver East, Kitsilano-domiciled NDP incumbent Jenny Kwan defeated Liberal Mark Wiens of Richmond, Conservative Lita Cabal of Surrey and People’s Party of Canada’s Meghan Murphy of Mexico.
Only Green Nikida Steel and Communist Kimball Cariou called Vancouver East their home.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was elected seven times in an Ottawa riding between 2004 and 2021. He lost Carleton in 2025 to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy under unique circumstances. They were among a record 91 candidates, because of the Longest Ballot Committee protest against the first-past-the-post system.
Poilievre returned to the House of Commons four months later as a parachute candidate in the Battle River-Crowfoot by-election in his native province, Alberta.
Caley relying on star power to win
Poilievre and NDP leader Avi Lewis both made appearances to support their candidates. Poilievre’s name is not on Curran’s signs, but Lewis’s is on Tweedale’s.
Carney made a visit to the riding on day three of the by-election, July 29, and appears prominently in Caley campaign ads.
No fewer than 18 other Liberal MPs from across the country have interrupted summer holidays to rally the troops at Caley’s campaign office or join door knocking crews, including cabinet ministers Francois-Philippe Champagne (finance), Julie Dabrusin (environment), Melanie Joly (industry), Steven MacKinnon (transport) and Gregor Robertson (housing).
Former Vancouver Mayor Robertson was Caley’s mentor at Vancouver city hall from 2011-2016, where Caley was the press secretary. Robertson, who lives in a West End penthouse, made a comeback in 2025 as the Liberal MP for Vancouver-Fraserview-South Burnaby.
Ironically, Caley was part of Robertson’s inner circle when the ruling Vision Vancouver party made a mayoral challenger’s residency an issue in Robertson’s third winning campaign.
Pierre Poilievre and Stephen Curran near the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. (Curran)
Vision Vancouver’s 2014 ads included one that attacked NPA opponent Kirk LaPointe for living on the University of B.C. campus.
Robertson’s affidavit in an unsuccessful Provincial Court challenge of his candidacy during that election said he lived in a downtown apartment after breaking up with his wife. But he continued to list her Kitsilano residence as his official address with the civic election office.
In 2026, LaPointe is now a West Vancouverite, aiming to upset incumbent Mark Sager in the Oct. 17 mayoral election.
Lower Mainland Liberals
Not only are MPs flying from across Canada to help Caley, but he is also relying on Liberal activists from other parts of the Lower Mainland.
Volunteers include: Richmond’s Erich Harvey, the Liberal Party of Canada in B.C. director of political operations; Burnaby’s Ayesha Khaira, senior field organizer and former advisor to Dominic LeBlanc; Zachary Severyn of Vancouver, an intern for Vancouver Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed; Richmond’s Mark Wiens, a real estate agent, 2025 Vancouver East candidate and master of ceremonies at events for business and cultural organizations connected to the Chinese consulate; and Russil Wvong of Vancouver, a 2022 candidate with Kennedy Stewart’s Forward Together party who lost a nomination for OneCity’s 2026 campaign.
The driving force behind Caley’s campaign is Michelle Johnston, vice-president since June 2025 of Vancouver’s Syntax Strategic and neighbour of the Harry Jerome Recreation Centre.
Johnston was deputy director of communications during Justin Trudeau’s last year as Prime Minister. The financial agent is Murray Campbell, the husband of former BC United MLA and CentreBC founder Karin Kirkpatrick.
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