Vancouver’s ABC won’t stop meeting in private, despite integrity officer’s findings

Vancouver’s governing party made the comment after the city integrity officer found such meetings breach policy

ABC, the party that controls seven of nine seats on Vancouver city council, has no intention of stopping caucusing in private, its leadership says, despite the integrity commissioner’s recent finding that such meetings breached city policy.

But municipal governance experts say the city could expose itself to legal challenges if council improperly engages in backroom decision-making.

In an email, ABC president Stephen Molnar said: “We disagree with the commissioner’s narrow interpretation of how local elected officials can work together. Municipal political parties and caucus meetings have been part of Vancouver’s civic fabric for decades, reflecting a well-established democratic practice.”

“We will continue to caucus, consistent with our understanding of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms-protected freedom of association, to develop policy ideas and maintain alignment with the platform that voters supported,” Molnar said.

The watchdog’s investigation, which was prompted by a complaint last August from Green Coun. Pete Fry, found that these private discussions of the ABC caucus — which included a quorum of the board — were not “merely an informal exchange of information,” but materially advanced park board decision-making outside of public view in an improper manner.

But Southern’s new investigation provides an in-depth look inside ABC’s inner workings, including access to emails and message histories. The report notes: “The documents are clear and no respondent took issue with their authenticity.”

Vancouver, like other Canadian cities, has rules forbidding municipal politicians from caucusing and privately discussing government business as their provincial and federal counterparts do.

“The open meeting principle requires that the business of local government be conducted in an open, transparent way, and not behind closed doors,” Southern’s report explains.

Three of the six park commissioners elected with ABC in 2022 departed the party at the end of the following year. This means ABC’s remaining three park board commissioners can meet privately now without forming quorum.

But if ABC plans to continue privately caucusing on matters related to city council — where the party still controls a supermajority — that “seems offside and is really troubling,” said Nathalie Baker, a partner at Vancouver law firm Eyford Partners.

Baker, an expert in municipal law who has worked with several B.C. municipalities, said she was surprised at ABC’s response to the commissioner’s findings this week.

“It’s so brazen. It’s essentially saying that they don’t care what the Vancouver Charter says,” Baker said. “I think the city is exposing itself, potentially, to a lot of litigation if it continues to conduct its business that way, because it does look to be in contravention of the Vancouver Charter.”

Ian McCormack, a local governance expert and president of Strategic Steps consulting firm, said the integrity commissioner’s interpretation seems correct, and if council plans to continue caucusing as the park board was found to have done, “then surely that would open it up to challenge.”

“It could conceivably end up in front of the courts, and they would make a decision,” McCormack said. “The minister may intervene at some point, too.”

Vancouver’s integrity commissioner does not have the authority to adjudicate on breaches of the Vancouver Charter, but she can make findings on the city’s code of conduct. In this investigation, Southern found that ABC politicians breached the code by failing to uphold the values of the Vancouver Charter, namely by engaging in “conduct that reasonably undermined or had the potential to undermine public confidence in park board governance when they did not comply with the open meeting requirement.”

ABC Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim’s office declined to comment on the integrity commissioner’s findings.

Molnar declined to be interviewed, and a party representative said: “The statement provided is our comment on the report.”

The three current ABC park commissioners — Angela Haer, Marie-Claire Howard, and Jas Virdi — declined to be interviewed for this story, but Howard replied with an email largely mirroring Molnar’s statement.

Howard wrote that: “The gatherings in question were informal strategy sessions without any binding decisions, thus not violating open meeting requirements. Our voting records and consistent public engagement demonstrate that ABC elected representatives reflect a wide range of ideas.”

In addition to Fry’s complaint about the ABC park board politicians, he also simultaneously made a parallel complaint alleging the party’s council members were breaching the open-meeting principle. The investigation into Fry’s complaint about ABC’s council members is continuing.

Responding to ABC’s statement Tuesday, Fry said: “The key issue is not whether ABC is meeting to exchange ideas, but that they are gathering to provide decision-making direction, while simultaneously demanding party loyalty under the threat of disciplinary action.”

“The claim that whipped votes on decisions align with the party platform is contradicted by the report’s assertion that ABC members are expected to vote according to the mayor’s direction,” Fry said. “This is further supported by instances where votes were clearly whipped, such as on issues like the Stanley Park bike lane and the Moberly Park turf field, as detailed in the report, neither of which were in the ABC platform.”