The report, which has not yet been made public but a copy of which was obtained by Postmedia, said the Stanley Park bike lane and turf fields at Moberly Park were among the issues inappropriately discussed in private by the ABC caucus
Elected officials with Vancouver’s ABC party violated city policy requiring “the business of local government be conducted in an open, transparent way, and not behind closed doors,” the city’s integrity commissioner has found.
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After an investigation into a complaint filed seven months ago by a rival politician, Vancouver’s integrity commissioner found the six park board commissioners elected in 2022 with ABC — three of whom have since left the party — breached the “open meeting principle,” a requirement “intended to protect and preserve democracy at the local government level.”
The report has not yet been released publicly but a copy of it was obtained by Postmedia News.
All Canadian provinces and territories have some kind of open meeting requirement for local governments, the report says, and this has existed in B.C. since 1881. Municipal politicians are not allowed to meet, caucus and discuss the business of government in the same ways as provincial and federal elected officials, says the new report by integrity commissioner Lisa Southern, an outside lawyer hired by the city for this work. One reason is because, unlike their provincial and federal counterparts, local governments do not pass legislation after debate in a legislature.
“Without statutory requirements for transparency, municipal governments could ‘rule’ without any need to keep the public informed about what they are doing,” Southern’s report says. “In effect, municipal governments act like an executive and legislative branch in one, so if they were not required to be transparent in their governance, and openly debate decisions, democracy would suffer.”
The Stanley Park bike lane and turf fields at Moberly Park were among the issues inappropriately discussed in private by the ABC caucus, the report says. Because a meeting of at least four ABC commissioners would involve a majority of the board, it would constitute quorum for decision-making.
During Southern’s investigation, park board commissioner Laura Christensen, who was elected with ABC in 2022 but left the party in December 2023, said that during her time with ABC, party representatives made clear to elected officials they were expected to “vote as a ‘united front’ and that it was not acceptable to have dissenting votes or abstentions.”
In her report, Southern writes: “Some may say ‘this happens all the time,’ or ‘other parties have done this.’ That is not for me to determine. My job as integrity commissioner is to assess the complaint in light of the evidence before me and make a determination within my jurisdiction under the Park Board Code of Conduct Policy … as to whether the complaint is well-founded.”
Southern wrote that despite the arguments submitted by legal counsel for the three commissioners who still represent ABC, the complaint that prompted the investigation and report was well-founded and ““raised issues that squarely engage the public interest.”
That complaint was filed last August by Green councillor Pete Fry, shortly after ABC council members made the surprise move to shut down the integrity commissioner’s work for an undetermined time pending a review of the office. At that time, Fry filed two parallel complaints alleging ABC elected officials violated the open meeting principle: one against all six park board commissioners elected with the party in 2022, and another against all eight ABC council members, including Mayor Ken Sim.
After Fry’s complaints, the push to freeze the integrity commissioner’s work then stalled, when the matter came to council for a final decision in August. Because every ABC council member — who form a majority of council — found themselves under investigation by the commissioner’s office, they therefore could not vote to shut down its work without risking the appearance of conflict.
Fry received a copy of the park board report on Sunday, and it is expected to be made public this week. Reached Sunday, Fry said he had not yet received a report from his complaint about council members, and he understands that investigation is continuing.
Fry said the report illustrates “backroom decision-making with outside political agents working on city business, unnamed political operatives influencing the outcomes of a decision-making process that is supposed to happen in an open and transparent way. For me, that’s a big problem.”
“That is the essence of why we have these rules in the first place,” he said.
All six commissioners elected with ABC were found to have breached their obligations under the policy. As the publication of the report “sufficiently serves the public interest,” Southern recommended no further sanctions or discipline.
Christensen, one of the subjects of the complaint and the board’s current chair, said Sunday that she fully accepted the report’s conclusions and findings.
“I hope this report will provide the public with transparency and confidence in their local governance,” she said in an emailed statement.
Although she and other commissioners raised concerns at the time about inappropriate caucusing, she said, “I recognize that my past participation in these practices may have contributed to public distrust. That is why I have fully co-operated with this investigation, providing any relevant information and documents that I could in the hope of restoring the public’s confidence.
Christensen added that she apologizes for her actions, to the park board’s sole Green commissioner Tom Digby, to park board staff, and “most of all to the residents of Vancouver.”
More to come …