A secret plan and closed-door meetings mark controversial week for ABC party ahead of supportive housing vote

Good morning, 

Nate with you today. I’m fond of the proverb ‘when it rains it pours.’ When the metaphorical (and recently, literal) skies about up it’s just a brief period of time before a misting turns into a deluge. 

That’s how it feels covering city hall at the moment. When one big raindrop of controversy or intrigue drops on your shoe (or your head, or your inbox) there’s many more about to pelt down and soak you. 

There’s been a steady patter around 12th and Cambie, most recently with details emerging on ABC’s secret plan for the Downtown Eastside, and former ABC park board commissioners being found to have breached the province’s open meeting policy. 

We’ll wade through that with you today, and look ahead to the storm on the horizon that is Mayor Ken Sim’s motion to pause city investment in new supportive housing projects at today’s council meeting.    

Grab your rain jacket and let’s get into it. 

— Nate Lewis, Vancity Lookout

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WEATHER

Wednesday: 13 🌡️ 6 | ☁️

Thursday: 11 🌡️ 4 | 🌤️

Friday: 11 🌡️ 6 | 🌤️

NUMBERS OF THE DAY

🏗️ 416: The number of rental apartments proposed as part of a 21-storey two tower development in Kits. The large lot is currently occupied by two three-storey rental buildings with 89 apartments total. It’s one of the largest single redevelopment proposals to date in Kits, falling on the far western of the Broadway Plan area. [Urbanized]

🏊🏼‍♀️ 50 metres: The length of the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre pool, after park board commissioners amended staff’s recommendation for a 25 metre pool, and passed the motion by a 3-2 vote. The amount of public input and debate extended the meeting to two nights.

CITY HALL

A secret plan and closed-door meetings mark controversial week for ABC party ahead of supportive housing vote

What happened: The Globe and Mail's Frances Bula obtained ABC’s secret plan for the Downtown Eastside (DTES), which was circulated among ABC councillors in fall 2024 as a confidential memo. 

The details: The leaked memo, written by Mayor Ken Sim’s chief of staff, Trevor Ford, called for quick, individual rezonings of DTES sites for private development, a comprehensive review of non-profit services in the neighbourhood, and a plan to help return DTES residents, specifically referring to Indigenous people, to their “home Nations,” if they want to move. 

• An updated version of the memo from January 2025, provided by the city to the Globe and Mail and CBC News, softened its criticism of the existing DTES area plan and removed the reference to Indigenous residents, referring rather to people disconnected from their previous support networks.   

The memo also suggested the “disproportionate” provision of mental health and substance-use services in the DTES has worsened the two crises in the neighbourhood. 

ABC response: In a statement to The Globe and Mail and CBC, Ford said the memo is an "internal working document meant to inform discussions and explore ideas."

"It has not been presented publicly because it is not a finalized strategy," Ford said in a statement. "Any actions taken from this document would be presented publicly as a motion through the standard processes."

Plan in action: The leaked memo also includes the policy to halt net new supportive housing investments – which Sim is attempting to pass later today at council – and some of the measures recently announced in the Vancouver Police Department’s “Task Force Barrage,” which would expand police presence and target organized crime in the DTES. 

• Coun. Rebecca Bligh – who was removed from the ABC caucus earlier in the month for not being a “core value fit,” according to the party – said she believes it was her concerns about ABC’s internal DTES plan that led to her expulsion from the party, according to the Globe and Mail.

Broken promises: ABC has broken its promise to develop plans for the DTES with non-profit sector experts and community leaders, according to a coalition of DTES organizations and individuals that participate in the Coordinated Community Response Network (CCRN). 

“The CCRN was deeply disappointed to learn that ABC elected officials and the Mayor’s Office staff chose to operate behind closed doors, failing to consult the very people they had committed to working with before and after the election,” they said in a statement. 

“The recently leaked Mayor’s Office ‘secret plan’ is unimaginative, predictable, and ultimately a recycling of previous failed approaches to city building… Its apparent objective is to systematically dismantle the DTES. There is nothing new in this ABC plan, its intention will only hurt the most vulnerable while opening the doors to unfettered gentrification,” the CCRN stated.  

• An open letter, signed by over 50 DTES non-profit and advocacy organizations that participate in CCRN, said the mayor’s recent framing of their work as part of a “poverty industrial complex” in the DTES is harmful and damages relationships with the community and its supporters while eroding public trust in the non-profit sector. 

“We agree that there is significant work to be done in the Downtown Eastside. However, lasting solutions must be developed in true partnership… The path forward cannot rely on division but must focus on tackling the root causes of these challenges,” the open letter argued. 

• At 1 pm today, the housing advocacy coalition Our Homes Can’t Wait is organizing a rally outside city hall to protest the mayor’s plans for the DTES. 

The open meeting requirement: The two non-ABC councillors at city hall – Bligh and the Green Party’s Pete Fry – echoed the criticism that ABC is governing behind closed doors, according to the Globe and Mail and CBC.

That alleged practice by ABC appears to go beyond this plan for the DTES. Earlier this week, Lisa Southern, the city’s integrity commissioner, found six park board commissioners breached the Park Board’s Code of Conduct policy, undermining public confidence in the park board by not complying with the open meeting requirement.  

• Local governments in British Columbia and across Canada are required, with some exceptions, to hold open meetings and govern in a transparent way. 

Southern found Commissioners Laura Christensen, Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky, Angela Haer, Marie-Claire Howard, and Jas Virdi – all of whom were elected officials with the ABC party at the time – breached their obligations to hold meetings in public on four occasions in 2023 when they held informal private in-person meetings and group chat conversations about park board business relating to the removal of the Stanley Park bike lane and turf fields at Moberly Park. 

• An ABC party requirement – revealed in Southern’s report – for commissioners to vote together or face “appropriate disciplinary action,” from the party “appears to have played a role in the [comissioners’] failure to comply with the Vancouver Charter’s open meeting requirement,” Southern said. 

Responding to the decision, ABC’s president Stephen Molnar said the party disagrees with Southern’s interpretation and elected members will continue caucusing in private “to develop policy ideas and maintain alignment,” according to the Vancouver Sun. However, governance experts quoted in the piece said continuing this approach would likely open the city to litigation. 

• Dive deeper: Our look at Coun. Rebecca Bligh’s removal from ABC last week examines how the party disciplines dissent in their ranks. 

Supportive housing storm: Looking ahead to Mayor Sim’s motion today to halt supportive housing, there’s sure to be a lot of talk about spreading housing supports across the region. 

Since 2017, the city has committed land to “enable the creation” of approximately 1,400 supportive housing units, according to a staff report presented on Tuesday. Staff said the Metro Vancouver region will need approximately 2,900 net new supportive housing units over the next five years based on provincial housing targets, with about 75 per cent of those being placed outside Vancouver. 

• However, they noted mandatory provincial housing targets don’t include targets for supportive housing. 

The report also said there’s “a large proportional surplus” of supportive housing in Vancouver compared to the Metro Vancouver region. As noted in Sim’s motion, staff reiterated that 77 per cent of the region’s existing supportive housing units are in Vancouver, while the city has 25 per cent of the region’s total population.

Thought bubble: While the numbers support the need for other areas to build supportive housing as well, it’s worth questioning how a halt to net new supportive housing in Vancouver will encourage those projects to be advanced in other municipalities. 

How temporary will the proposed pause be if Vancouver’s support for new supportive housing projects is tied to “meaningful progress” in increasing this type of housing across the region? “Progress” and “meaningful progress” in the region are leaned on as the criteria to resume the program but aren’t defined in Sim’s motion.  

 Based on the current lack of supportive housing across the region, and the continuing struggle to approve it, the people in need of this sort of housing – and the medical and social support it also offers – will be the ones left waiting for help as the need increases over the next five years.    

DREAM HOME

We’ve been running this “Dream Home” section for quite some time now. But frankly, the social and economic climate around housing in our city makes it challenging to feature real estate in a way that doesn’t feel gross. 

Our listings here have run the gamut from lookie-looing at mansions and penthouses to highlighting funny or novel listings like houseboats and mechanics garages, featuring modest apartments and townhouses that genuinely seem nice at a (relatively) reasonable price, and, most recently, finding co-op buildings that are currently accepting applications. 

But as we move forward, we’d like to hear from you, our readers, about what type of tone and listing hits the mark for you. 

If you have other thoughts or opinions, drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know you’d like to see in this section in future.

THE AGENDA

🤕 FIFA World Cup organizers have requested their athletes and VIPs get access to pre-arranged medical care at designated Vancouver hospitals during the 2026 tournament. FIFA said this is standard practice for their competitions, but the B.C. Ministry of Health said there are no agreements in place with Vancouver Coastal Health for this sort of priority access. [CBC]

✈️ Musqueam Indian Band and the federal government have signed an agreement to share revenue for the leasing of YVR Airport on Sea Island. The international airport, which operates on Musqueam’s traditional territory, has a long-term ground lease with the federal government. Specifics of the revenue-sharing deal are being kept confidential, but the airport paid the government $69 million for the ground lease in 2023. [Castanet] 

🧱 With older vacant buildings, like Dunsmuir House, falling into states of disrepair, Vancouver’s chief building officer is currently examining the condition of about 50 vacant buildings. He talks about that, earthquake concerns, and much more in this Q&A with Christopher Cheung. [The Tyee, Vancity Lookout]

🚔 Mayor Ken Sim formally requested the B.C.’s office of the police complaint commissioner release an investigation report that looked into allegations he was driving while impaired in January 2023 – allegations which Sim called “an outright lie.” The watchdog has said it will not release the report, but clarified the investigation was focused on the actions of the VPD officers who pulled Sim over, not the mayor himself. The document cleared the VPD officers of the alleged misconduct, the OPCC said. [BIV, TheBreaker]

Outside Vancouver

👋 Surrey city council has unanimously voted to withdraw from Metro Vancouver’s long-term regional planning. Legally, it’s unclear if the municipality can decide to withdraw from the regional plan, but it’s another expression of frustration with the regional body over high costs and equitable cost sharing. [Vancouver Sun, Vancity Lookout]

⛴️ BC Ferries announced they’ll be moving ahead with a major overhaul of their Horseshoe Bay terminal. The work will happen “over the next few years” with an unspecified budget in the range of hundred of millions of dollars. Changes to terminal access could start as soon as Fall 2025. [Urbanized]

EVENTS

Performing Arts

Choir and pop music? Yes, please. PopCappella 3D will feature songs from popular artists like U2, Leonard Cohen, K.D. Lang and the Supremes. They’re performing from Mar. 7-9.

Over in Burnaby, you can catch one of the few semi-professional opera companies in the province, with a performance of The Marriage of Figaro by W.A. Mozart. Tickets are $40 at the Shadbolt Theatre until Mar. 1.

If you’ve been needing more classic music in your life, then the CSO Chamber Players have you covered with their program of Mozart, Brahms and Bartok, from Mar. 6-9 at Pyatt Hall.

Movies

It’s Oscar week and VIFF has you covered with Conclave, The Seed of the Sacred Fig and screening Oscar Shorts. There’s also Dune Part One and Part Two.

Rio also has a stand-out lineup, with Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a role she should’ve been nominated for in Hard Truths, as well as Anora and Nosferatu next week.

The 31st Rendez-Vous French Film Festival is on from Feb. 28-Mar. 7, with multiple movies to see.

Art

Performance and sculpture come together in Sculptural Rebirth at the Vancouver Art Gallery, from artist Tadasu Takamine and students at Emily Carr, starting Mar. 2.

Also at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Mar. 21 is Riopelle: Crossroads in Time, from the famed artist Jean Paul Riopelle, celebrating their 50 years of work, with paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints.

There’s still time to see Divya Mehra at the Contemporary Art Gallery. Mehra’s work is about precision and wit, with works focused on the social landscape of the Pacific Northwest.

Finally, Canadian artist Douglas Coupland’s Models at the Equinox Gallery features intimate figure paintings from the artist, until Mar. 29.

IMAGE OF THE DAY

A retro photo of the old Wally’s Burgers on Kingsway, which closed in 2008 after 46 years there. Since then, Wally’s has re-opened other South and North Van locations. 

GAME TIME

Residents and visitors alike should have no problem with today’s simple guesser question.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• A celebrity chef opening a steakhouse at the River Rock has high praise for the Vancouver food scene [Vancouver Sun]

• Google said they’re going to update “state park” labels after the search giant made a change to their listings that upset some Canadians [CBC]

• Art is essential, but we need to act like it [The Tyee]

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