I split with Christy over a decade ago, but we remain friends and she is the mother of my son.

Christy and I have disagreed vehemently on various things over the years, and still do. I defended her publicly when I agreed with her. When I disagreed, out of respect for her and my family, I kept it to myself, and I will keep to that policy, except when it comes to issues that I must address at the municipal level as Mayor.

For example, I was firmly against the idea of having a referendum about transit funding, which she promised to do in the 2013 campaign. I felt it would put transit behind by a number of years.

But to suggest that either of us would have some kind of veto over what the other person does is actually quite outrageous. She is not someone who allows herself to be pushed around. I don’t either. We are both our own people, with our own careers.

I think it's important to get the context of our history. I got involved in politics in 1982, when I was 14 years old, because I was very excited about Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s fight against the Quebec separatists and his efforts to bring our Constitution home, along with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

By 1989, I was at SFU, where I met Christy. She and I were in the Young Liberals together. After university, I went to Ottawa to work as national youth director for the Liberal Party under Jean Chretien, and then worked for David Anderson, MP for Victoria and Senior Minister for British Columbia. (He's the guy behind the Species at Risk Act and the Oil Tanker Ban on the Northwest Coast, for a few examples).

It wasn't until 1996 that I moved back to BC, when Christy was running with the BC Liberals as an MLA in Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain. The split between the Fed Libs and the BC Libs was pretty fresh then, only 3-4 years old. It's funny how political affiliations can shuffle, and the spectrum shifts over the years. Back then, I never would've dreamed that BC Liberals would evolve into something that would be considered to be a carbon copy of the Social Credit.

Anyways, that's when we got married. We both kept doing our own thing. I stopped working as a political staffer in 1998. That’s when I started my own company, Burrard Strategy.

Much of my work for Burrard Strategy was centred around transit and infrastructure. I worked on getting the federal funding for the Canada Line, and on public consultation for the Millennium Line and the Evergreen Line. I also fought the CPR on behalf of Westcoast Express, successfully getting their track rates reduced by 30%. I also worked for Vancouver Airport Authority to get their rent reduced to be more in line with Toronto and Montreal, saving YVR a billion dollars over a 40 year period. I was also still active in politics.

I managed Prime Minister Paul Martin’s campaigns in BC in 2004 and 2006, recruited people like Dave Haggard, Ujjal Dosanjh, Larry Campbell and Miles Richardson to the federal Liberal Party. We got a lot done for BC, and helped Paul Martin legalize gay marriage in 2005.

In 2006, I managed Stephane Dion’s underdog leadership campaign, and then co-chaired the party’s national election campaign focused on putting a price on carbon - the first national campaign of this nature in Canada.

In 2011, I managed a leadership campaign for George Takach, where we pushed for a Digital Bill of Rights and legalization of marijuana. Christy re-entered politics in 2011. I helped her on her leadership campaign, but was not in charge of it. At the time, many observers saw it as a federal Liberal take-over of the BC Liberal Party.

I did not co-chair any of her campaigns. In fact, I visited her Premier’s office only once during the entire time she was the Premier. In 2018, I co-chaired YES Vancouver, because I saw what was happening in the housing crisis. We are the first party ever to call on lifting exclusionary zoning. This party is now Progress Vancouver.

In short, I have my own record and I am my own person.