Meet Your Candidate: Ehsan Monfared
Village Resident seeks Council seat
Editor's Note: The Watershed has contacted all the current candidates running in the upcoming Municipal Election to give them the opportunity to answer a few questions. All the candidates were offered the same questions (apart from those which differ to reflect the experience of candidates who have not held office before). Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself? How long have you lived in the Village? What's your favourite part of living here?
I’m a dad to two awesome kids, and we moved here six years ago for the obvious reason — ocean on one side, mountains on the other, and a drive in and out of the village that is stunning every day of the year. We stayed for what sits underneath that. My kids go to school in the forest. Professionally, I’m an aviation lawyer, a tech entrepreneur, a community volunteer. For the last two years I’ve helped run Canada Day, Oktoberfest and Easter with the Events Committee, and honestly those weekends are my favourite part of living here: you get to bring people together and in the process, end up knowing your neighbours rather than just recognizing them.
You have never held the position of Councillor before. What made you step forward to take the job on now?
The prospect of an uncontested election. That was the trigger. Democracy isn’t a privilege any community gets to take for granted, and it isn’t easily regained once it’s lost. The Village’s own 2026 resident survey tells the rest of the story: only 27 percent of us feel we have a real opportunity to provide input into municipal decisions, and nearly half say quality of life here has declined in five years. I’d rather residents have a genuine choice on the ballot and a genuine debate in public than have another term where their views are not reflected in the decision making process.
How many Council meetings have you attended in person or online?
I’ve attended at least two in person, and certainly upwards of 10 meetings online. I’d add that attendance is a low bar. What matters is whether a resident who can’t give up a weeknight can still follow what was decided and why. The Municipal Advisor the Province sent here in 2023 recommended that agendas go out the Friday before each meeting and minutes be processed immediately after. Those are basic things, and I’d hold Council — including myself — to them.
Have you volunteered for a Village committee or event? What other volunteer experience do you have?
Two years on the Village’s Events Committee — Canada Day, Oktoberfest, Easter. Before Lions Bay, three years as a Director of Katimavik, the national youth volunteer program, and seven years on the board of the Canadian Business Aviation Association, chairing its Governance and Nominations Committees and serving from 2022 to 2024 as Chair of the Board, the youngest person to hold that role. Volunteer governance is where most of my board experience comes from, and that’s the experience I’ll be using to engender consensus around the council table, based on resident feedback.
Should you win your seat, what is the most important challenge facing the Village in the upcoming term?
Restoring the Village’s ability to make decisions residents can trust — because the infrastructure bill can’t be paid without it. The Village’s own asset plans put the sustainable annual funding gap at roughly $640,000 to $900,000 a year, and 96 percent of residents call infrastructure maintenance critical. But only 38 percent are satisfied with the Village’s long-term financial planning, and only 27 percent feel they have a real say in decisions. A Council that can’t credibly ask residents to accept a plan can’t fix the pipes. Trust first; the money follows. Even most recent numbers in terms of the infrastructure gap appear to be detached from reality with a near six-times increase!
The most recent term of Council was divided to the point of dysfunction. Do you have any thoughts for a positive change?
Yes — and I’d start with the roadmap we’ve already been handed. In 2023 the Province sent a Municipal Advisor to Lions Bay, and his report is on the Village website. He called this “the most politically polarized and publicly divided” community he had worked in, and he made specific recommendations: agendas out early, minutes processed immediately, staff reports with pros and cons, a Code of Conduct with real consequences, and a depoliticized Village Update. None of that requires new personalities. It requires the next Council to adopt it in public and be measured against it. Disagreement is healthy. Hours spent arguing about procedure instead of the problem in front of us is not.
In the last term, Financial Officer Joe Chirkoff noted that the Village faces at least $10 million in pending infrastructure upgrades not covered by grant money. How would you prioritize these projects?
I’d start by getting the numbers straight in public, because residents are hearing $10 million, $40 million and $240 million and nobody has explained what each one measures. The Village’s own asset plans from 2016, 2019 and 2020 put the total replacement value of everything we own at $44 – 49 million, and the sustainable annual investment at roughly $840,000 to $1.2 million — against a capital budget that has been as low as $200,000. That yearly gap is the real number, and the newest of those plans is six years old. Priority order: life-safety and regulatory obligations first — water supply, slope stability, fire — then the work that costs more the longer we defer it, then everything else. And publish the ranked list, so residents see the trade-offs before the vote, not after.
What strengths do you bring to the Council table?
Showing up, first. Two years of setting up tables at Canada Day isn’t a credential, but it’s how I actually know this village. Then the professional part: I negotiate and draft complex agreements for a living, and I’ve spent a decade turning dense regulation into terms people can act on — which is most of what a Councillor does with a staff report. I’ve chaired a national board, so I know how to run a meeting that ends in a decision rather than a grievance. And as a pilot I was trained to work from checklists and treat risk as routine, not reactive.
The recent clear-cutting of a private property on Oceanview Road has prompted a petition and a public outcry. Would you support the creation of bylaws addressing tree-cutting, protection of riparian boundaries and steep slopes?
Yes, in principle — and we aren’t starting from zero. The Village already has Natural Hazard Assessment Area guidelines for steep slopes and creeks, and a 2021 Community Wildfire Protection Plan that asks homeowners to do FireSmart work around their homes. The first question is whether we enforce and update what exists before drafting something new in anger. A bylaw written quickly tends to catch the neighbour that is removing fuel which the wildfire plan told them to remove, alongside the clear-cut that prompted it. I’d ask staff for options and a real comment period, then vote in public.
Many residents along Mountain, Sunset and Bayview have expressed frustration with the vast increase in hiker vehicle parking and traffic. Suggestions have been made to offer alternate parking in the gravel pit or elsewhere on Crown land. How would you respond to resident concerns?
First, by acknowledging that the people on those streets should have been asked before decisions were made, and largely haven’t been. Residents want parking managed, not ignored — the Village’s own survey found only 31 percent support reducing parking management. Alternate parking at the gravel pit or on Crown land deserves proper scoping — tenure, cost, servicing, enforcement, and whether visitors will actually walk from it — and that scoping should be published, not guessed at. And I’d stop treating hiker demand purely as a burden. On a busy day residents have counted hundreds arriving at Kelvin Grove. Managed parking is revenue, and that revenue belongs against the infrastructure gap.
The recent trial of public porta-potties positioned near the Village centre has produced calls of concern regarding smell and garbage from nearby homeowners. This is balanced against evidence that visitors are relieving themselves on our local streets. Do you have any thoughts to share?
The honest comparison isn’t porta-potties versus nothing — it’s porta-potties versus what was already happening on our streets, which is what the trial responded to. So the real questions are siting and servicing, not whether. Ask the households closest to the current location where they would put them instead, publish the servicing schedule and the complaint log so everyone is arguing from the same facts, and fund better facilities from visitor parking revenue rather than from residents’ taxes. Ideally, we move away from porta-potties to a more sustainable, more environmentally conscious approach to the seasonal influx of visitors into our community.
What else would you like to share with residents today? Where can they reach you? Do you have a website where voters can read your platform online?
I’d genuinely like to hear from residents directly. My email is LBEM@monfared.ca and my platform and thoughts are online at www.monfared.ca. I’m running so that we can have these discussions. I’ll be at the all-candidates meeting which will take place on October 4, now at Lions Bay School, and look forward to the diverse perspectives and concerns among our fellow Villagers.
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