Vancouver’s integrity commissioner has ruled that Mayor Ken Sim and seven of his ABC Vancouver councillors broke city rules by meeting in private to discuss and plan city business.
Lisa Southern’s report, dated Aug. 22, was based on a complaint lodged last summer by Green Coun. Pete Fry.
The report concludes that Sim and councillors Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lisa Dominato, Lenny Zhou, Brian Montague, Mike Klassen, Peter Meiszner and Rebecca Bligh breached the Vancouver Charter by privately planning how they would vote on and amend two items before council: funding for a turf field at Moberly Park and a climate justice charter that was ultimately defeated.
While political parties are permitted in B.C. municipal politics, city rules ban councillors from privately discussing how to advance city business in most cases, under the principle that the public be allowed to see how decisions are being made.
“No one (including me) is saying that the ABC Council Members cannot meet as a caucus. They can meet. They can meet with quorum, with an agenda, at City Hall,” Southern wrote in her report.
“But what they cannot do under the current legislative scheme (and when I say current, I mean longstanding as it has existed within Canada for 140 years) is meet in private with quorum and discuss City business such that it moves that business along in a material way towards a decision of Council.”
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Southern concluded that councillors can’t evade the requirement to conduct city business in public by simply saying their meeting was done as members of a political party, nor by saying they didn’t vote at the meeting or that they kept an open mind.
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“If Council Members meet with quorum outside of an open meeting, discuss City business, and do so in a way that moves that business along the spectrum of decision making in a material way, there is a problem,” Southern wrote.
“They are depriving the public of participation in the policy development and decision-making processes that serve to build public trust and confidence in local government. Democracy is undermined.”
Fry said the report emphasizes the need for greater openness and transparency at city hall.
“It’s quite clear that there has been decisions that are made behind closed doors without the oversight of the public, even other councillors, even our staff, and that’s not the way it’s supposed to go,” he said.
Mayor Ken Sim said it was “unfortunate this has been politicized” and accused Fry of “filing complaints based on technicalities.”
“Here’s the reality, of course we talk about politics and items affecting our city, we’re ta team. And the city of Vancouver elected us and gave us an overwhelming majority to make improvements to the city, and this is exactly what we are doing.
Vancouver’s integrity commissioner does not have the authority to hand out any discipline, and any sanctions coming from the report would be decided by council — where ABC holds a majority.
But that could change. B.C.’s Ministry of Municipal Affairs said it was planning to consult with municipalities about mandatory codes of conduct, including how they would be enforced and administered, with an aim to have changes in place by the next municipal election.
“People in every community in BC expect council members to work together to serve and be accountable to those that elected them and to tackle the big challenges facing their communities,” Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Christine Boyle said in a statement.
UBC political scientist Stewart Prest said the report could signal political trouble for ABC Vancouver, which swept to power in the 2022 municipal election with a majority on council, the park board and the school board.
“It feeds into a narrative that ABC is high-handed in its approach to politics, that the mayor and the mayor’s office always takes a ‘My way or the highway’ approach,” Prest told Global News.
“And more and more members of ABC itself have said, well, actually, we prefer the highway. And so we have seen Rebecca Bligh expelled from ABC caucus, we have seen members of the ABC caucus at other levels, at Park Board, walk away from the party.
Since taking office, three park board commissioners were forced out of the party over opposition to Sim’s plan to abolish the elected body.
The school board chair also quit over ABC’s approach to the integrity commissioner, and ABC expelled Coun. Rebecca Bligh after she publicly opposed a freeze on new supportive housing.
It is not the first time ABC has come into conflict with the integrity commissioner.
Last summer, the party proposed a motion to pause Southern’s work pending a review of the scope and mandate of her office.
ABC ultimately walked the proposal back following public backlash.
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