Vancouver mayor Ken Sim introduced a motion at city council on Aug. 6 to delay enacting a bylaw stopping Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern from continuing her reports until as many as three months after any review into her work is done.City of Vancouver
The political party that controls city council in Vancouver has decided not to proceed with plans to suspend the work of the city’s integrity commission following a public outcry and a successful blockade by an opposition councillor.
At a city council meeting Tuesday, unusually called during the summer break specifically to pass a bylaw to enact the suspension, Mayor Ken Sim instead made a motion to delay enacting the bylaw until Sept. 25.
The bylaw was slated to halt Lisa Southern, Vancouver’s first integrity commissioner who investigates the Code of Conduct complaints against city council, from continuing her reports until as many as three months after any review into her work is done.
The mayor said he was taking that action because opposition Green Councillor Pete Fry had sent an e-mail to council members and senior city staff over the weekend saying he was going to file a complaint to the commissioner. Mr. Sim claimed that Mr. Fry had violated proper procedure.
“His action has broken the expected confidentiality of the process. I have no choice but to recommend a recess … until this break from established protocol is dealt with,” said Mr. Sim, who accused Mr. Fry of grandstanding for political effect and of being often willing to break rules.
While the mayor’s statement in council made it sound as though Mr. Fry was going to be investigated himself for a breach of protocol, the mayor’s chief of staff, Trevor Ford, clarified later that the mayor did not want to proceed with suspending the commission’s work when Mr. Fry was filing a complaint that potentially involved the mayor and his party’s councillors.
Mr. Ford said Mr. Fry warned the mayor and council in his e-mail that they might be in a conflict of interest if they voted for the bylaw changes knowing that there was a pending complaint involving them,
Mr. Fry acknowledged to the Globe and Mail that he did issue that warning but said: “I didn’t think it would work quite as well as this.”
He said his main effort to prevent the vote from going through was by ensuring that he and his fellow opposition councillors didn’t appear at the meeting in order to force ABC councillors to take public stands.
He felt it was important to make those efforts because the city desperately needs a fully operational integrity commission more than ever, Mr. Fry said.
“It’s important we have this function more than ever when we have a neophyte government trying to run things like a business.”
Almost two weeks ago, ABC councillors introduced a motion in what was supposed to be the last meeting of the summer to suspend the work of the commission, saying that the mandate of the commissioner’s office needed to be reviewed.
Councillors Brian Montague and Lenny Zhou said it would be unfair to have Ms. Southern continuing to investigate complaints that might end up being outside the new scope. But political opponents claimed that it looked as though the ABC council was trying to suppress some commission reports that would paint some members of the ABC team in an unflattering light.
The commissioner issued two reports Friday where she dismissed complaints from both parties involved in the backroom tussling. One was from the mayor’s two office staff, complaining they had been secretly recorded in a conversation with a park board commissioner. Ms. Southern said recordings aren’t illegal if one party knows about them.
In the second complaint, where a park board commissioner complained he had been bullied and pressured by the mayor and his two staffers, Ms. Southern said there was no evidence presented that the mayor had ordered his staff to do that and that the staffers are not covered by the city’s code of conduct or integrity commission because they are neither regular city employees nor elected politicians.
On Tuesday, Mr. Sim said Mr. Fry’s correspondence over the weekend had slowed down the process of doing a proper third-party review of the commission’s mandate and he claimed Mr. Fry has opposed any kind of review.
When asked in a news conference to explain how Mr. Fry’s actions would slow the review down, the mayor did not provide an explanation.
Mr. Fry said he does not object to a review, only to the suspension of the office while that review is being planned and conducted.
Only six members of council showed up for the surprise special meeting Tuesday.
The three opposition councillors said they wouldn’t attend because they wanted no part of what they said was an indefensible ABC decision, and two ABC councillors – Lisa Dominato and Rebecca Bligh – also did not appear. Mr. Sim, wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt and light running shorts, was the only one who attended in person
The council could have still voted on the issue, because six people at Vancouver’s 11-member council constitutes a legal meeting.
Mr. Ford has said that the ABC team tried over the weekend to convince Ms. Southern not to post her reports publicly on Sunday, claiming that she had several fact errors in her summary, particularly in her descriptions of his behaviour.