Concerns over secret meetings ‘politicized,’ Vancouver mayor says

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is responding to allegations raised by the city’s integrity commissioner that he broke the code of conduct.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is pushing back against a scathing new report that found he and his ABC majority on council violated the city’s charter by discussing upcoming votes out of the public’s view.

On Monday, integrity commissioner Lisa Southern released the findings of her year-long investigation into a complaint that ABC had breached Vancouver’s “open meeting” requirement, which prohibits council business from being conducted in secret, with limited exceptions.

Asked about the report Tuesday at an unrelated event, Sim stood by the meetings, which Southern found sometimes included inappropriate discussions about pending motions and amendments.

• Related: Watchdog finds Vancouver mayor, councillors violated charter discussing upcoming votes in private

“Of course we talk about politics and items affecting our city, we’re a team,” Sim said. “Vancouver elected us and gave us an overwhelming majority to make improvements to the city, and this is exactly what we’re doing.”

Sim said he strongly disagrees with some of the investigation’s findings.

Southern’s report makes clear that ABC is allowed to hold party caucus meetings under the Vancouver Charter.

What the mayor and councillors are not allowed to do is privately discuss city business with quorum – enough members to hold a vote – if it “moves that business along in a material way towards a decision,” the commissioner 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,” Southern added.

“Democracy is undermined.”

A challenging investigation

Green Coun. Pete Fry filed the complaint against his ABC colleagues last year, singling out seven instances in which he suspected they had violated the city’s charter. Southern found they had in two cases.

That was despite what the commissioner described as an uphill battle investigating the complaint. Southern said she was unable to obtain all the records she sought from ABC members, or even answers to all her questions.

“I was limited in my inquiry and have no statutory power to perform an independent search or review of records, or to compel production from the respondents or others,” she wrote in her report.

One key piece of evidence she did receive was an email thread from July 2023, when Sim’s office shared with the ABC councillors a draft amendment to a motion on the city’s Growing Communities Fund.

Coun. Brian Montague replied to the group, asking for “a clarification” about whether they are “voting down” part of the proposal, according to Southern’s report.

“Montague appears to be asking for clarification about how the respondents had decided to vote on the item” in advance of a meeting, the commissioner wrote.

Her investigation also found that ABC councillors and the mayor’s office had communicated about motions and amendments using the encrypted messaging app Signal, which “automatically deletes messages.”

She was unable to obtain any records of those conversations.

No recourse available

Fry said he fears there will be few repercussions for his ABC colleagues, as under the current Code of Conduct bylaw, some members of the party’s majority would have to vote for their own punishment.

He and the other two opposition members on council – OneCity’s Lucy Maloney and COPE’s Sean Orr – said they will be pushing to update the bylaw this fall to ensure “appropriate recourse” for breaches.

“These rules protect the public from corruption. The city needs the power to actually enforce them,” said Orr, in a statement.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sim suggested the issue had been “politicized,” and said the complaint took up “a lot of resources and time and energy that could be better spent making our city a way better place.”

His office told CTV News the investigation would likely cost taxpayers around $200,000 – though Fry said he believes that was a reference to legal fees Sim and the councillors will likely try to recover from the city.

“The sad reality is that our standard practice is to indemnify councillors,” Fry said this week.

In a previous investigation, Southern found ABC members of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation had violated the city’s open meeting requirement as well.

In her report, she noted that ABC publicly disagreed with that decision – which led B.C.’s ombudsperson to issue a public letter calling the statements “a disturbing repudiation of the rule of law.”