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“For my biggest priority, if we want to keep building Vancouver as a world-class city, we need to finally connect the innovation at Western Canada’s largest research centre, UBC, with Western Canada’s largest employment centre, which is our downtown core. And we will do that by finally building the SkyTrain line out to UBC,” said Allam during his confirmation speech on Sunday.

“This is my number one transportation policy, but I’m not stopping there. Because after we do that, I am going to go to the province and ask them to amalgamate Vancouver and the University Endowment Lands into one single municipality. We need to dream big and bring young people back to Vancouver, and together we can do it.”

Allam, a political strategist and consultant, was the campaign manager for the ABC Vancouver party’s 2022 civic election campaign, and briefly the chief of staff for Mayor Ken Sim. The two men fell out dramatically; allegations by Allam led Sim to file a defamation lawsuit against his former right-hand man earlier this year. Since leaving the mayor’s office, he has been highly critical of Sim and ABC’s policies and governance style.

In an interview with Daily Hive Urbanized on Monday, Allam said merging the UEL with the City of Vancouver would result in more revenue for Vancouver’s municipal government, when it comes to property taxes and the expected increase in the UEL’s transit-oriented development densification following the completion of the SkyTrain extension.

He says the amalgamation concept has “incredible economic synergies that are so just plain and obvious. I think [it] helps to create a more vibrant economic region.”

“The opportunity to plan the growth of UBC around the SkyTrain alongside with the City of Vancouver, I think it unlocks a tremendous amount of potential.” He notes this also includes enhancing green spaces found within the UEL, and the ability to host more events under municipal jurisdiction.

But Allam also shared that on the flip side, there is also a need for new and improved municipal services within the UEL, which he says is highly underserved.

Through the B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, for nearly a century, the provincial government has directly administered and provided municipal services to the UEL, which is technically classified under “Electoral Area A” of Metro Vancouver. In effect, Christine Boyle, the B.C. Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, serves as the de facto mayor of the UEL. Municipal property taxes are directly paid to the provincial government.

Allam notes that the UEL continue to depend on an under-resourced RCMP detachment for policing. The area also falls under the Vancouver School Board’s (VSB) jurisdiction, with University Hill Secondary School, University Hill Elementary School, and Norma Rose Point Elementary School all operated by the VSB. Residents of the UEL already participate in Vancouver’s civic elections to vote specifically for School Board trustee positions.

“Electoral Area A doesn’t even have the most basic things like a noise bylaw,” he said.

The idea of amalgamation is not new. According to Allam, successive provincial governments — dating back to the era of the B.C. Social Credit Party — has periodically raised the possibility of such an amalgamation. However, he notes that consecutive City of Vancouver administrations have been “the most nervous about taking it over.”

As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized in 2023, the BC NDP-led provincial government recently completed a study identifying four potential options for the future of the UEL’s governance. This includes maintaining the status quo, transitioning to the jurisdiction of Metro Vancouver Regional District to make local infrastructure improvements, becoming its own municipality, or amalgamating with the City of Vancouver. The two municipal options would also address the longstanding issue of the UEL not having any locally elected municipal representation.

This recent provincial report did not make a recommendation, but it noted that there are economies of scale in having the City of Vancouver oversee and improve the UEL’s municipal services.

The UEL spans 12 sq. km. (2,965 acres) — equivalent to three times the size of Stanley Park and comparable to the 15.6 sq. km. that make up the City of New Westminster. The UEL is wedged between the UBC campus land — which is not part of the UEL, and separately self-governed by the university administration’s board of directors — and the City’s westernmost borders.

Pacific Spirit Regional Park’s forested area of 7.7 sq. km. (2,160 acres) accounts for 73 per cent of the UEL’s total land area, and it is already directly managed and operated by the regional district.

The University Golf Course is also included in the UEL’s overall land area calculation, making up about 0.5 sq km (120 acres) or four per cent of the UEL. The Musqueam First Nation owns this golf course, but under an agreement with the provincial government, this site must be used as a golf course until 2083, at which point it can potentially be opened up for development. TransLink’s previous highly preliminary route concepts in 2022 for the UBC SkyTrain included one possible cost-saving option of having the Millennium Line extension directly cut through the golf course between West 8th Avenue and University Boulevard, as opposed to completely running along University Boulevard starting west of Blanca Street.

If the UEL were to join the City of Vancouver today, it would grow the municipality’s population by about 0.5 per cent and increase its land area by eight per cent from 115 sq. km. to 127 sq. km.

About 3,200 people in about 1,500 households currently live within the UEL.

By 2050, the UEL’s population is expected to more than double to 7,300 people, which will “likely exacerbate issues the community is currently facing through increased demands for improved levels of service delivery, robust plans and policies, and good decision-making processes,” reads the provincial report.

“If my campaign is about one thing, it’s bringing young people back — young people going to university, studying, and driving research, tech, and innovation,” said Allam, saying the current disconnect between jurisdictions “makes no sense at all.”

“We need to think big, we need to invest big, and we need to recalibrate how we’re planning ourselves with the City, and how the UBC and UEL themselves are planning themselves accordingly. They’re not meeting the moment, and we will help them to do that.”

But without overhauling municipal governance and service levels in the UEL, he says, the area is not capable of seeing major growth after the arrival of SkyTrain.

“Just to be pro-Vancouver, taking over the University Endowment Lands and densifying it also helps Vancouver keep ahead of Surrey as being the number one population centre for Metro Vancouver,” quipped Allam, referring to the popular expectation that Surrey’s high pace of growth could see its population exceed Vancouver’s over the coming decades.

The last time Vancouver’s municipal boundaries expanded was in 1929, when the provincial government amalgamated the Municipality of South Vancouver — which encompassed much of what is now East Vancouver — and the Municipality of Point Grey, which included much of today’s Vancouver Westside neighbourhoods, into a single larger entity of the City of Vancouver. This was also the last time any municipal amalgamation occurred within the broader Metro Vancouver region.

As for the more near-term objective of bringing SkyTrain to UBC, Allam says the current situation of long, crowded bus waits and the delays with the project is “insane.”

“From an economic perspective, this is something that will unleash a tremendous amount of economic opportunity. It’s the basis for a solid housing plan to densify along that line, and it’s a climate plan. There are no disadvantages to this,” he continued.

“Of course, there’s going to be some people that are chafed about having a massive line like this go through their single-family neighbourhoods, but the economics, the environment, and the housing opportunities are just too big to ignore. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to prioritize this.”

Earlier this month, Vancouver City Council unanimously approved a member motion urging the provincial government to expedite the business case and technical planning process for the UBC SkyTrain extension, and to commit to a clear implementation timeline. As well, they will ask the federal government to designate it as a “Project of National Interest” under the new federal Major Projects Office.

At present, TransLink and the Mayors’ Council have slated the project for the second phase of the regional transit authority’s current 10-year expansion and improvement plan (2025–2034). This timeline suggests that construction could begin in the early 2030s, provided that the project’s multi-billion-dollar funding is fully secured.

As previously reported by Daily Hive Urbanized, provincial contractors carried out geotechnical studies in 2024 to support the business case work, including borehole drilling at 100-metre intervals along the entire corridor between Arbutus and UBC to collect soil samples. As of September 2025, a major part of the business case work is done, and it will take about one more year to establish the financial framework for delivering the project.

Although the Vancouver Liberals, founded by Allam, have yet to contest in any election, an early civic election survey conducted by Mainstreet Research earlier this month suggests that both the Vancouver Liberals and the newly formed Vancouver Conservatives currently hold an early lead in public support, if an election were held today. Neither party is affiliated with their federal or provincial counterparts of the same name.

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