City has lessons to learn after heavy-handed inspections

On Thursday, councillors Mike Klassen and Pete Fry, along with staff from the mayor’s office and the city, met with more than a dozen venue operators, promoters, and artists who are active in the city’s underground music and dance scene. 

The meeting was held in response to complaints about a night of coordinated inspections by city agencies in mid-December, which included four Vancouver Police (VPD) officers, three city inspectors, and one inspector from Vancouver Fire Rescue Services (VFRS). 

“I think what really came up was this particular approach on December 13 seemed disproportionate and heavy-handed,” Fry told Vancity Lookout following the meeting. 

As we reported last week, Paige Frewer at the Birdhouse described the December inspection as a raid, unlike any inspection they’d ever had before. City agencies had conducted three previous nights of coordinated inspections in 2025, but it was the final one in December that rubbed operators the wrong way.

“There were [coordinated] inspections that took place in June, September, November and December, and the only ones that seemed to create the friction were the ones that took place mid-December,” Klassen relayed to Vancity Lookout. 

One difference in the December inspection may have been the number and conduct of VPD officers. According to city staff and the VFRS, there were four police officers on the night of December 13, while VFRS stated that “inspection teams generally consisted of between 1 and 2 members per agency.” 

“Their intimidating conduct was totally unnecessary,” Frewer said of the officers’ behaviour during the December 13 inspection. When reached for comment, the VPD referred Vancity Lookout to VFRS. 

“I'm hoping that with some direct communication and discussions with staff that they'll be able to follow this up,” Klassen said. He added that he’d already spoken with officials from VFRS and the city’s permitting department who were involved in the December inspection. 

Klassen’s takeaway from those conversations mirrored the public statements made by VFRS to Vancity Lookout that the coordinated inspections were intended to “minimize the impact on operators of legitimate businesses.” 

“Something obviously happened in December … we had an outcome that probably provided us with some lessons on how to do it better,” Klassen said. The main lesson Klassen noted was the need for stronger points of communication, including the potential to establish a regular meeting with the underground nightlife community. 

Fry, who used to run his own after-hours spaces in Vancouver, said he understands the challenges for operators but recognized that, notwithstanding the recent inspections, this council has “actually done a lot more than in the past” to support alternative nightlife spaces. 

The clearest example of that support is the Arts and Culture Event License (AEL), which was expanded in 2023 to allow events of more than 250 people and to double the number of days per month, from three to six, that venues could operate.

A December 19 press release from VFRS said the coordinated inspections were focused on “high-risk, unlicensed venues,” but interviews with venue operators and data shared with Vancity Lookout by the city showed that many of venues were licensed under the AEL. 

Inspection data shows that over the course of 49 inspections between June and December 2025, nine fines were issued to venues for operating without a business license. “It was a very stigmatizing mischaracterization,” to call all these venues high-risk and unlicensed, Fry said. 

VFRS told Vancity Lookout it was consulted and involved in the 2023 changes to the AEL program, and these licenses are not classified as ‘high-risk’. 

“Our focus with this enforcement is on the venues where we suspect that the organizers may have overlooked or ignored public safety requirements,” Justin Mulcahy with VFRS told Vancity Lookout. 

“A business could have a licence but may not be in compliance with the conditions of their licence,” city staff added. “This could include overcrowding, serving alcohol without appropriate approvals, [or] not adhering to the approved safety checklist.” According to city data there were six fines issued to venues for breaching these conditions during the enhanced enforcement period. 

“Some of it is a bit of teething pains,” Klassen said with regard to the AEL changes. “How can we set up VPD so they have a better understanding of these venues that are licensed,” Klassen said, noting there’d been some confusion with event spaces with different license statuses operating near each other.

“We've had a good open dialogue with the community,” Klassen said. “We want to be a fun city, and this is one way that we can achieve that.”

Fry emphasized the importance of fire safety at music and dance events, with the risks highlighted by a tragic fire at a bar in Switzerland that killed 40 people and injured over 100 during a New Years party. That bar hadn’t had a fire inspection in five years, according to ABC News. 

“I think everybody supports fire safety, and certainly in the wake of the tragic events of New Years in Switzerland, [it] underscores the importance of life safety and compliance with the fire bylaws,” Green Party Councillor Pete Fry told Vancity Lookout.

Half of the 32 fines handed out to 12 underground venues during the enhanced enforcement period were for non-compliance with fire bylaws, with the most common fire bylaw violation, which occurred eight times, being a failure to properly maintain exits. 

“Our focus is on attaining fire code compliance and we work cooperatively with building operators to gain compliance,” VFRS said. 

Platform 9, a relatively new warehouse venue in the False Creek Flats industrial area, is a case study of how the city’s inspection program can be effective, enhancing fire safety while allowing a well-used underground space to continue operating.

Platform 9’s founder Dzhent Yetkin opened the venue in November 2024, operating without a business license for ten months. Platform 9 was fined by the city in the summer of 2025 and told to apply for an AEL, Yetkin told Vancity Lookout. 

The city approved Platform 9’s license in September and continued to inspect the venue every two to three months, fining the venue twice for fire safety issues relating to emergency exits and signage, Yetkin said. 

Yetkin said he resolved the fire safety issues that Platform 9 was fined for, and when inspectors came again on December 13 the venue passed the fire safety portion of the inspection. “The city's requirements about fire [safety] are important … We have a huge responsibility as a venue” to host people in a safe space, Yetkin said.