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If City Hall were to do just one thing,

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it should be making our residents

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feel safe walking down the street.

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Over these four years in office,
what has been

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especially memorable for you?
Any little stories like that?

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Wow, so many. Actually, I think
the most memorable thing for me

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is talking with residents.

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For example, one time I was really moved.

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It was at a seniors' home in Chinatown,

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talking with the seniors. One of them

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told me, in tears,

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back when I'd just taken office,
she made a living collecting bottles.

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Every morning she'd go collect bottles,

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then sell them

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to cover her living costs.

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She told me that one morning,

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she got up early, out the door at 7,

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collected bottles all day,
and on her way back,

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in the Downtown Eastside, she ran into

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some people, probably drug users,
who came at her

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waving weapons,

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knives and such, forcing her to hand over

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the bottles she'd collected all day.

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So with no choice, this old lady

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just handed them over.

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But with no money, how could she
live in a seniors' home?

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Yes, the Downtown Eastside has

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some provided for low-income seniors,

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seniors' homes.

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So at the time, I was really moved.
She was crying

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her eyes out, and told me,
feeling so wronged,

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how after a whole day's effort,
an old woman had collected

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these bottles, only to have to
hand them over that evening.

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It was such a pitiful thing.

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But around last year, when I saw

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her again, she also felt
that public safety was getting better.

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So she told me she could finally go

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out and collect bottles without worry,
and get on with

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her own life at the seniors' home.

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So that really moved me,

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because it's true: the policies we make

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can affect everyone in the community.

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So, over the next four years,

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what are your future plans?

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Right. I think the key thing
for policy going forward

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is still public safety.

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Public safety has gotten better
over the past while,

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a lot better. When we first took over,

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back then, in 2022,
on Vancouver's streets,

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on average, every day, there were

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five random attacks.

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Random attacks. That's really frightening.

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So anyone could become

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the victim of a random attack like that.

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That number has now dropped
to under one.

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Under one is still quite a lot.

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I want to get that number down to zero.

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I saw a news story saying that this year,

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Vancouver really did manage

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not to raise taxes.

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Yes. This year,
Vancouver's property tax increase is zero.

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And we managed it without cutting
any core services.

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We achieved a zero property tax increase.

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We did all of this with our

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residents' wallets in mind.

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This year,
out of over a thousand cities in Canada,

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only three had a zero
property tax increase.

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But Vancouver is the biggest.

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For a city of Vancouver's size,

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we're the only one.

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Actually, another way City Hall supports
small and mid-sized businesses

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is cutting red tape, making the city

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more efficient. And this is something

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we've been doing over the past few years,

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right? Like, over the past four years,
we've cut

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2,000 different regulations of all kinds,

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rules for small and mid-sized businesses,
over 2,000 pages.

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I heard that before, say
you wanted to rent

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a place and then renovate it,

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you had to get through City Hall's...

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the City of Vancouver's approval
for the renovation.

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Very long waits.

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A year or two.

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How long does it take now, roughly?

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Right, the exact numbers now...

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as I recall, for renovation permits,

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you should be able to get one
within three weeks.

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Three weeks.

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Within three weeks.

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Because you cut over 2,000 pages.

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Over 2,000 pages. And we use technology
to speed up the approval process,

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right? Getting the approvals department
to focus more on

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customer service, rather than

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creating hassles for them.

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You'll be using

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some AI assistance to help with approvals.

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AI assistance. It's interesting: before,

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approvals were all still on paper.
When I went over to

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the approvals and planning departments
to take a look,

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it was all rolls and rolls of paper.

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At least now it's all online.

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And the next step

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is to use AI tools, to have AI help

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us review the whole approval process
and speed it up.

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I used to go downtown a lot too,

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since I went downtown for school.

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And I'd often see those big buses.

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They're actually really big and wide,
but the roads are very narrow.

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And I'd see the cars up ahead.

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Actually, whether you're driving
a regular car

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or whatever, you're right up
against the bus,

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maybe just a few centimetres apart.

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So dangerous, driving like that every day.

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And I feel like, with Vancouver's roads,

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is there any chance of widening them?

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Vancouver is one of North America's few

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big cities with no freeways downtown.

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Because actually, the space to build them

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isn't enough either. Actually,
the earliest, the very early

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immigrants were also opposing Vancouver's

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freeway project. Why?

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Damaging the natural environment?

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The environment was one issue.
The other

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was the damage to all of Chinatown,

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which would be huge. At Dunsmuir,
there's a viaduct

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right downtown, the stretch
from Chinatown

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into the city centre. That viaduct,

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our old Chinese community,
back in the '70s,

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opposed it together,
so it was never completed.

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Of course, just imagine: if back then

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the freeway had been built,
all of downtown,

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a lot of buildings might be gone.

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The impact on Chinatown
would have been huge.

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So these are some issues
from Vancouver's history.

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So in downtown Vancouver,

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Dunsmuir Street is actually an unfinished

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viaduct. If you know the history,

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it's a really interesting bit of history.

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But this was also our old Chinese
community fighting for

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their own rights.

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I'd like to say thank you.

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Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Focus Media.

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Thank you to all our viewers.
Thank you, everyone.