Mayor Ken Sim makes case for re-election in speech to Vancouver business crowd

With six months left until voters go to the polls, Ken Sim’s speech to the business community featured new promises and swipes at his opponents.

From the time he gladhanded his way into the room, and especially once he took the stage, it quickly became clear Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s address to a Greater Vancouver Board of Trade luncheon was a campaign speech.

“The work of getting our city back on track is well underway,” he said near the beginning of his remarks. “But we’re far from finished. In fact, we’re just getting started.”

Over the course of thirty minutes, Sim highlighted some of his A Better City Vancouver party’s achievements since being elected with a majority on council in 2022.

He highlighted this year’s property tax freeze, but failed to mention the nearly 22 per cent cumulative increase over the previous three years.

He also took credit for a decrease in some violent crimes, while swiping at rivals on city council who are after his job.

“Certain members on council want to return to failed, reckless and chaotic strategies that allowed these problems to get worse,” he said, without specifically naming anybody.

New campaign promises

Sim also used the speech to make a pair of new campaign promises.

If re-elected, he says he will freeze property taxes for a second consecutive year.

And he says he will commit $400 million in the next capital plan to rebuild five community centres.

Sim did not say which facilities would receive the investment.

Late in the afternoon, the Office of the Mayor put those promises in writing in a news release on city letterhead, rather than using ABC Vancouver logos and distribution channels for the campaign-style material.

“Mayor Sim also announced that if re-elected with a majority on council, taxpayers would receive a second consecutive zero per cent property tax increase in 2027, with tax rates returning to the rate of inflation in the years following,” a portion of the news release said.

Sim says growing pains behind him

During his speech, Sim acknowledged implementing his vison for the city has been more challenging than he anticipated prior to being elected.

“I didn’t realize how big of a challenge the bureaucracy, and other political agendas, got in the way of it,” Sim reiterated in a media scrum following the luncheon.

“So, we’ve learned and we’ve pivoted. What I can tell you now is, through those learnings, we’ve turned the ship around. And we like the direction of our city and where we’re going.”

Political rivals respond

Sim’s former ABC colleague Rebecca Bligh has formed her own party and is running against him for mayor under the Vote Vancouver banner.

“He said it himself that it took about two-and-a-half years for him to get up to speed on how things go. I don’t know that he’s any further ahead now,” she said. “What I’m promising is that for eight years I’ve been in council, and I know how the system works.”

Veteran councillor and Green Party Vancouver mayoral candidate Pete Fry promises a more open and collaborative approach if he’s elected.

“As far as how business is done in the city of Vancouver, the backroom style that Mayor Sim has embodied and the lack of transparency, those are the absolute opposite of how I intend to run the city,” Fry told CTV News.

OneCity Vancouver, represented on council by Lucy Maloney and in the mayoral race with candidate William Azaroff, issued a news release following the mayor’s speech.

“He’s promising another tax freeze and a $400 million slush fund to pull the wool over the eyes of Vancouverites,” the release said.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a slush fund is “an unregulated fund often used for illicit purposes.”

That is not an accurate description of what the mayor pitched as a plan to upgrade community centres through the city’s legitimate capital plan process.

Vancouver voters go to the polls on Saturday, October 17.