Breaking down the integrity commissioner and city council fracas

Good morning,

Be careful out there, the next few days are set to get hot, with temperatures rising to upwards of 30 C on Thursday (though thankfully not a heat wave). Stay in the shade, take cold showers and close those blinds to keep the hot sun from heating your house. The city has a helpful guide for staying cool. 

I have a small favour to ask. Every week we feature volunteer opportunities in Vancouver so readers can connect with others and give back to the community. If you’re an organization that needs volunteers, or you know of a group that needs them, reply with the details and we’ll include it in our next Wednesday newsletter.

Let’s dive into today’s news!

— Geoff Sharpe, Vancity Lookout editor

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WEATHER

Wednesday: 27 🌡️ 18 | ☀️

Thursday: 30 🌡️ 19 | 🌤️

Friday: 29 🌡️ 18 | 🌤️

CITY HALL

Breaking down the integrity commissioner and city council fracas

Well, sometimes stories are simple and sometimes they’re complex. Today’s is most certainly the latter. Let’s break down exactly what’s going on with Vancouver city council and the integrity commissioner. 

What happened: Late in July, ABC council members set in motion a future meeting to curtail the powers of the city’s integrity commissioner by suspending her work, and voting to hire a third-party investigator to clarify the commissioner’s role, arguing that the commissioner herself said her role was not always clear, according to the Globe and Mail. 

• The integrity commissioner’s role is to provide advice to council, receive and assess complaints, and investigate and report to council on those complaints, among other things. 

Counter-point: Coun. Fry noted that the commissioner had already recommended ways to provide more clarity around her duties. ABC was criticized heavily for the perception that they were trying to shut down potential criticism.

• The problem: The third-party review would freeze any findings from ongoing investigations, including any that might be pending against council members…

Too late: Before the special council meeting yesterday scheduled by ABC, commissioner Lisa Southern released two reports on Friday, about an investigation into complaints from former ABC member and park board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky made against the mayor, according to CTV. The complaints were not found to have merit, but the commissioner did note that staff and Sim did not respect the confidentiality of the process. 

One of the complaints was that there was alleged political interference by the mayor’s office to encourage Bastyovanszky to step down from the park board. Southern said the mayor did this in his capacity as ABC party leader, not as mayor. 

• In an opinion piece in Vancouver is Awesome, journalist Kirk LaPointe outlined in detail the complaints which you can read here, speculating that this complaint may be why ABC brought in the motion in the first place. 

On Tuesday: Rather than proceed with the vote on the third-party review, Mayor Ken Sim postponed the meeting to September. Coun. Pete Fry filed a last-minute complaint with the integrity commissioner on Monday, in an email sent to the mayor, councillors and city staff, according to the Vancouver Sun. Sim noted that complaints are supposed to be confidential, but Fry said he did not actually name the people he was complaining about, rather that it was about public meetings. 

Confusion abounds: According to CTV, Mayor Sim did not clarify why the delay in the vote was needed (the complaint by Coun. Fry did not, in fact, require a delay in the vote).

• Looking ahead: The vote on freezing the commissioner’s work and bringing in a third party has been moved to September. The commissioner’s work will continue going forward. 

What it means: Did you follow all that? It certainly isn’t the easiest issue to grasp. The key question is why postpone the vote if ABC had the votes. What is clear, and is an ongoing trend, is that Mayor Sim is very focused on the machinations of politics. Just look at the ongoing issues around ending the park board. Unfortunately, that is causing ABC more headaches than they probably hoped for.

More information:

• For a play-by-play of the meeting, you can read urban columnist Frances Bula’s Twitter thread. 

• Coun. Pete Fry was interviewed on the Early Edition with Stephen Quinn outlining his thoughts on the meeting before it took place. [CBC]

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VANCOUVER NUMBERS

🏳️‍🌈 46: The number of years Vancouver’s Pride Parade has been running. Hundreds of thousands of people came to watch the parade over the weekend. [CBC]

📉 3.75%: That’s what the experts think the Bank of Canada’s interest rate could drop to by the end of 2024, down 1.25% from the current rate of 5%. [Urbanized]

🛣️ $1.5 million: The amount North Vancouver has to pay to a developer. The price was for the land that the city seized back in 2018 for highway expansion. [CTV]

🚍 2,945: The number of kilometres that TransLink’s director of systems engineers rode from Vancouver to Tijuana, using only public transit. [Vancouver Sun]

ENVIRONMENT

What’s going on with Vancouver’s tree canopy?

What happened: New data from Metro Vancouver shows that the region is losing tree canopy coverage while the amount of pavement in the city increases, according to the Tyee. That will have major impacts on how hot cities get and how stormwater is dealt with, amongst other things.

Data: The report shows that tree canopy coverage dropped 1%, to 31% from 2014 to 2020, while pavement grew to 54% from 50%. The worst city was Coquitlam which declined by 4%, while Vancouver’s canopy coverage grew by 1%. 

• Yet many Vancouver neighbourhoods have seen a decline in tree canopy coverage, especially between 2018 to 2022, according to the Times Colonist.

Neighbourhoods: The worst areas of Vancouver when it comes to canopy coverage is Strathcona (9%), which if you spend any time there in the summer as I used to, you know it’s impossible to ignore the lack of trees. The areas with the most tree coverage tend to be more affluent, with fewer large-scale developments like Shaughnessy (41%), Dunbar-Southlands (35%) and West Point Grey (34%).

Plans: Back in June, council voted unanimously to plant an additional 100,000 trees throughout Vancouver, with a focus on neighbourhoods that need trees the most, according to CityNews. 

• This isn’t a recent problem. A park board report released in 2018 showed that in some cases, neighbourhood temperatures differed by more than 20 C from the hottest to coldest areas. Areas with fewer trees had much higher temperatures. 

Zoom out: In previous years, city planners around the world had emphasized the need for sunlight, especially on the West Coast where rain and clouds were all too common, according to the Times Colonist. More recently, natural shade has increasingly been emphasized.

Fun fact: As noted by Lorien Nesbitt, an assistant professor of urban forestry and environment justice at the University of British Columbia in the Tyee story, towers built after the 1960s have been effective at increasing canopy coverage. Rather, it’s detached housing that’s driven the reduction in trees.

DREAM HOME

For today’s home of the day, we’re heading south, next to Marine Drive Station.

While the kitchen is smaller than I prefer, the rest of the unit is a good sized 781 square feet, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms. You get a lot of light in the unit due to the windows and a generous patio. Little design flourishes mean you won’t have to change much either.

Is it cheap? Is it expensive? Check the price to decide. 

THE AGENDA

🚛 It wouldn’t be a Lookout newsletter without a story about an overpass being hit by a truck. This time a semi hit an overpass in Stanley Park on Saturday. The overpass itself wasn’t damaged and there were no reported injuries. [CityNews]

🧑‍🚒 As of reporting last night, firefighters were battling a blaze in Mount Pleasant at Broadway and St. George, at the site of an abandoned building that up until 2023 — before a fire tore through it — housed 70 residents. [Urbanized]

🏗️ TransLink has been slow to get on board (get it?) with real estate development, but it’s making a big splash with a 30-storey mixed-use building at the Arbutus Subway Station. One expert says this type of development is very common in places like Hong Kong. TransLink will need the money, as the organization looks to find new sources of revenue as it gets closer to a funding cliff in the coming years. [Vancouver Sun]

❌ A reminder that the Canada Line between Bridgeport Station and Richmond-Brighouse will be closing at 9:30 pm on weekdays from now until Aug. 30 for construction at Capstan Station. Buses will run between the lines every 10 minutes. [Urbanized]

🧠 While this is just a conceptual design and vision from two private companies, this reimagination of Vancouver’s waterfront between Canada Place and the Port of Vancouver is worth a look. It includes new towers, piers, waterfront residences, walk space and a new park. What would you like to see there? [Vancouver is Awesome]

🏢 Does Singapore offer a model for Canada’s housing affordability problems? One urban planner says much of BC Builds housing program echoes policies used in Singapore, where the government plays a big role in land ownership and property development. [Vancouver is Awesome]

🪧Unifor Local 433 members at the Resident Inn Vancouver went on strike on Sunday, asking for higher wages, better workloads and better benefits, to be in line with other workplaces. [Unifor]

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Here’s a great shot of the Vancouver Pride Parade. Did you attend? How was it?

ARTS

Theatre

The Vancouver Fringe Festival announced their 40th anniversary season, with 74 different shows from Sept. 4-15. Check out the full line-up. 

Great news for art lovers — Firehall Arts Centre will receive $10 million for their accessibility upgrades in the 2027 capital plan, after originally being denied the money. [Stir]

Music

Discover new arraignments of Bach’s music along with vocal traditions from India and the Middle East. There are still a few shows left. 

Vancouver’s International Flamenco Festival is back from Sept. 12-22, with both paid and free events, with performances from around Canada, Spain, Taiwan, Mexico and more. [Stir]

Movies 

Dirty Dancing and Donnie Darko are not films I’d normally pair up, but Rio has gone and done just that, with both appearing tonight. Also this week is The Room, Kinds of Kindness and Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service. Full schedule here. 

Cinematheque has a number of ongoing series, including Film Club with matinee movies for kids and families, International Noir and Film Noir, and Our Stories to Tell featuring new Indigenous storytelling in film.

Art

The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver is featuring artists Ann Goldberg and Lauren Morris, with an exhibit focused on the summer months. 

From Aug. 17-18, you can join in on the Richmond Art Walk, exploring the city’s art scene with multiple galleries and other art venues participating. 

NEIGHBOURHOOD PUB

Back to bar basics with It’s Okay

Movies and TV idolize the neighbourhood pub. Before my time, and I’m sure many of you, Cheers symbolized that communal bar experience. The local bar is where the How I Met Your Mother friends spent their evening. In my most watched movie of all time, Shaun of the Dead, a merry band of British locals set out to journey to their local pub, in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. They reckon it’s familiar, safe and of course, stock full of beer.

The neighbourhood bar, more than just a place to drink, serves a critical function. A melting pot of different people, you’re likely to find college students, neighbourhood locals, sports fans, people off the street and tourists, all looking for comfort in a glass of cheap lager and comforting bar food.

To instantly subscribe to our food newsletter and read this story, click here.

COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

• The WWE Survivor Series: WarGames is the biggest WWE series to come to Vancouver in almost 20 years. [The Province]

• Ryan Reynolds released a guide to Vancouver. A little underwhelming to be honest, but Minerva’s is a good addition. [Vancouver is Awesome]

• One artist has been collecting the sounds of Vancouver and hopes to create an album from them. [Vancouver Sun]

• Congrats to Richmond native Camryn Rogers who won gold in the women’s Olympic hammer throw. [CBC]

• These are the best subscription coffee options in Vancouver. [Straight]

• Four Vancouver residents were just awarded the Order of BC. [Vancouver is Awesome]

GAME TIME

Can you name the park that’s on the left hand side of this photo? Reply with the correct answer and your name to be featured in the newsletter.