CentreBC candidate for West Vancouver-Sea to Sky
Meet Dan Wood
Dan Wood finds land and gets affordable housing built at a provincial Crown corporation, and founded a Canadian food technology company.
Most people running for office will tell you housing is a crisis. Dan Wood spends his working week inside it.
At a provincial Crown corporation, Dan works on the unglamorous middle of the problem: identifying land, running the feasibility studies, doing the due diligence, and negotiating the leases and agreements that turn a vacant parcel into homes people can afford. The partners on the other side of the table are non-profit societies, faith groups, Indigenous communities, existing housing operators, and local and federal governments.
It is slow, technical, deeply unromantic work. It is also the reason a building gets built instead of announced.
A decade in property, from the private side to the public
Dan came to public-sector housing the long way around. He started in property management with Henderson Land Development, then joined CBRE, first as a facility management specialist, then leading the Vancouver research team, where his job was to understand what was actually happening in the region's commercial real estate market rather than what people wished was happening.
From there he moved to McCarthy Tétrault as a facility management and business continuity specialist, work that meant planning for the days when things go wrong: earthquakes, floods, outages, the failures that a coastal province with one highway north should think harder about than it does.
In 2021 he took that private-sector grounding into the public sector, where he has been ever since.
A builder as well as an administrator
In 2020 Dan founded Strong Foods, a food technology company working at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, nutrition and sustainability, reinventing familiar comfort foods to be nutritionally denser. The process behind it was novel enough to be granted a Canadian patent — an examined, substantive right, not a filing.
Running a small Canadian manufacturing start-up teaches things a policy degree does not: what a permit delay costs when you are making payroll, how thin the margins are, and how much of a founder's week disappears into compliance that could be simpler without being weaker.
Trained in policy, certified in resilience
Dan holds a Master of Arts in Asia Pacific Policy from the University of British Columbia.
He also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from the University of British Columbia.
He is also an Associate Business Continuity Professional, certified through DRI International, with training in risk assessment, crisis communications and continuity planning.
Roots in the riding
I moved to West Vancouver in 2023.
Three years here is long enough to stop being a visitor. Long enough to have a café where they start the order when you walk in (Isetta, in Caulfeild). Long enough to have put in a vegetable garden and found out the hard way which corner of the yard actually gets sun. Long enough to know the difference between a Tuesday on the highway and a Friday in February.
And long enough to notice something that bothers me: almost nobody who pours my coffee, teaches in the schools here, or staffs the care homes can afford to live anywhere near where they work. That isn’t an abstraction I read about. It’s the street I live on.
I chose this place. That’s a different thing from being from here, and I think it’s worth being straight about which one you’re getting.
Why CentreBC
I have been a member of CentreBC since the party was founded, and I serve on the provincial executive as Communications Chair.
I believe housing, transportation and wildfire preparedness are engineering and budgeting problems before they are partisan ones. This corridor needs a representative who understands how things actually get built.
Background
Where he has worked
A decade in property, from private-sector management and research to public-sector affordable housing.
Apr 2021 – Present
Property AgentProvincial Crown corporation · British Columbia
Negotiates leases and agreements, and carries out feasibility and due diligence on land transactions. Works with non-profit societies, faith groups, Indigenous communities, housing operators, and local and federal governments to identify and secure land for social, affordable and mixed-market housing, group homes and specialized facilities.
Jul 2020 – Present
Founder & CEOStrong Foods · Vancouver, BC
Founded a Canadian food technology company combining advanced food manufacturing with nutrition and sustainability research. Its process is protected by an issued Canadian patent.
Apr 2019 – Jul 2020
Facility Management SpecialistMcCarthy Tétrault · Greater Vancouver
Facility management and business continuity services, including continuity planning and risk assessment.
Jul 2017 – Mar 2019
Team Lead, Vancouver ResearchCBRE · Greater Vancouver
Led commercial real estate research and market analysis for the Vancouver office.
Sep 2016 – Jul 2017
Facility Management SpecialistCBRE · Greater Vancouver
Facility management across a commercial portfolio.
Jul 2015 – Sep 2016
Property Management SpecialistHenderson Land Development Co. Ltd. · Greater Vancouver
Commercial and residential property management.
Education and credentials
Master of Arts, Asia Pacific Policy
University of British Columbia
Associate Business Continuity Professional (ABCP)
DRI International · 2019 – 2020
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