Integrity Commissioner: ABC violated City’s code of conduct - again

“When a municipal government improperly acts with secrecy, the democratic legitimacy of its decision is undermined.” - Integrity Commissioner, City of Vancouver 

The City of Vancouver’s Integrity Commissioner has ruled that Mayor Ken Sim and all seven city councillors elected with his ABC Vancouver party violated city policy by engaging in secret meetings in rejecting a Charter on climate justice and equity in 2023. 

The Commissioner’s full report is now public and can be read here. 

Earlier this year, the Integrity Commissioner filed a report concluding that ABC Park Board Commissioners had similarly violated the City’s open meeting requirement. In 2024, ABC attempted to muzzle the Integrity Commissioner. 

In the conclusion of the new ruling, the Integrity Commissioner references the previous violation while expressing skepticism that the violations in this case were inadvertent. 

She also notes that because these violations involved 8 of 11 members of City Council - the Mayor and all the Councillors elected under ABC’s banner in 2022 - there is no mechanism for sanctioning them: “Under the Code of Conduct By-law, Council determines whether to sanction its members, but no quorum can be reached in these unique circumstances.” Strengthening the office of the integrity commissioner should involve giving it the power to sanction. 

ABC has demonstrated a concerning pattern of disregard for due process in our civic institutions, in addition to the incidents ruled on by the Integrity Commissioner. The recent hiring of a new city manager was criticized for its lack of transparency, for example.  

“We’ve already seen ABC trustees voting to dispose of public school board lands and hand them over to for-profit interests,” said COPE School Board Trustee Suzie Mah. “With public land worth billions at risk, we need to elect a School Board majority who will act with integrity to preserve the public interest,” Mah added.

“We’re concerned ABC is going to ignore this ruling, and that's one of many reasons we're going to elect a new municipal government in October 2026 that will lead with integrity,” concluded Councillor Orr. “Next year’s municipal election is our chance to truly hold them accountable. COPE is committed to working with allies to evict ABC from City Hall, School Board, and Park Board - and to winning the city government we need and deserve.”