Watchdog finds Vancouver ABC park commissioners flouted policy with secret meetings

Vancouver's integrity commissioner has found that six park board commissioners flouted policy by conducting meetings on park board matters out of the public eye.

The six commissioners, who were then all members of the A Better City (ABC) party headed by Mayor Ken Sim, were found to have conducted multiple clandestine caucus meetings in which they formed a quorum.

The Vancouver Charter and the Park Board Code of Conduct both have sections that state that government officials should behave in a transparent matter, with the former saying that commissioners should conduct nearly all meetings in public with rare exceptions.

After a complaint from Green Coun. Pete Fry against the six commissioners last August, Vancouver Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern investigated and found they had an ABC-only group chat and numerous meetings that "materially advanced Park Board decision-making out of view of the public."

She rejected arguments from three current ABC commissioners — Jas Virdi, Angela Haer and Marie-Claire Howard — that the meetings were protected by the charter and the complaint fell outside the scope of park board policies.

"The discussions went beyond members sharing information informally," Southern found in her report released Monday, detailing meetings in February and May 2023.

"Instead, at the February 11 and 12 sessions, the Respondents effectively organized a voting bloc of Commissioners who strategically agreed ahead of time on how to deal with a specific matter."

Southern found that the ABC-only meetings saw the commissioners deciding how to vote about the Stanley Park bike lane and turf fields at Moberly Park, including on the specific wording of amendments.

There are no penalties built into the integrity commissioner's decision against the six commissioners, with any sanction having to be determined by the park board itself.

At the time of the secret meetings in 2023, commissioners Brennan Bastyovanszky, Scott Jensen and Laura Christensen were members of the ABC party.

They were booted from the caucus for opposing Sim's move to dissolve the elected body and now sit as independents.

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Brennan Bastyovanszky, a member of the mayor's ABC Vancouver party, said at a news conference in Queen Elizabeth Park that the city would be worse off if governance of parks was brought under city council's control.

Green Party Comm. Tom Digby is the only commissioner on the park board who is not a current or former member of the ABC party, and the integrity commissioner found the ABC-only meetings excluded him from decisions. 

CBC News has contacted Fry, Digby, and Bastyovanszky for this story.

Stephen Molnar, the president of ABC Vancouver, said in a statement that the party disagreed with Southern's "narrow interpretation" of how elected municipal officials could work together.

"The gatherings in question were informal strategy sessions without any binding decisions, thus not violating open meeting requirements," he said.

"Our voting records and consistent public engagement demonstrate that ABC elected representatives reflect a wide range of ideas." 

Disciplinary action threatened

As part of her investigation, Southern looked at how the ABC commissioners came to make the decision on one of the biggest flashpoints of their tenure — the Stanley Park bike lane motion in February 2023, which saw the temporary bike lane through the park dismantled.

At two ABC-only meetings before the motion on Feb. 13 — at the homes of an ABC representative and Mayor Sim — the six commissioners involved in the complaint extensively discussed how they would vote, Southern's investigation found.

"According to Commissioner Christensen, one ABC representative promised that if she and Commissioners Bastyovanszky and Jensen voted for the removal of the temporary bike lane, they would 'personally guarantee' funding would be provided to partially reinstate the bike lane in some form as a permanent solution," the report reads.

"Based on this promise, she said she agreed to vote in favour of removal of the bike lane."

All the then-ABC commissioners were in lockstep in voting to remove the bike lane at park board on Feb. 13, with Digby commenting on their unanimity.

"I don't know if the commissioners know this, but there is going to be a tremendous cost ... if your organization, the political group that you're affiliated with, has been making decisions that are not in the public realm," the Green commissioner is quoted as saying in the report.

The integrity commissioner also found that ABC school board trustees and park board commissioners were made to attend a party-only retreat in September 2023, with the directive to vote as instructed by ABC on budget matters, campaign promises and mayor's directives.

"If you do not [vote with ABC members], you can explain yourself at the next ABC Board meeting," reads an email from a senior ABC official quoted in Southern's report. "The Board reserves the right to decide on appropriate disciplinary action."

ABC has come under some scrutiny just months before a two-seat council byelection, with one councillor ousted and Vancouver School Board chair Victoria Jung leaving in August to sit as an independent.