Vancouver suspends work of integrity commissioner pending third-party review

Vancouver city council has voted to hit pause on misconduct investigations, suspending the work of the integrity commissioner for now.

The move was made on Wednesday, at council’s last meeting before summer break. Councillors voted to pause the commissioners investigations, meaning any complaints received will only be picked up after a third-party review of the scope of the commissioner’s office.

“I think it’s just a big pattern of behaviour of this ABC council,” said Vancouver Park Board commissioner Laura Christensen, an independent.

The integrity commissioner is an independent officer on a two-year term at the City of Vancouver. They are tasked with investigating a number of complaints, including those submitted around city council, and also advise council regarding “ethical obligations and responsibilities.”

“The integrity commissioner investigates code-of-conduct violations for elected officials. And without that, really, the code of conduct is kind of meaningless, because there’s nobody to investigate or show that the code of conduct has been broken,” explained Christensen.

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Christensen received a public apology from Mayor Ken Sim in March, after the integrity commissioner found Sim had broken code-of-conduct rules when he left her out of a critical meeting on the future of the Vancouver Park Board.

She is among those raising concerns about what this pause will mean.

“Right now, we don’t know how many open investigations there are, how serious those investigations are, and those will stay in the dark until this review is complete,” she said.

However, those concerns are not shared by everyone. The motion to investigate the commissioner’s scope of work was put forward by ABC coun. Brian Montague.

“I think any pause will be a brief one, we’ll get a report back from the independent third party, and we’ll go from there,” he said.

When asked whether he was currently the subject of any investigations in that office, he said, “I have no investigations against me at this point.”

In her 2023 annual report, Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern said the role of her office isn’t always clear. She made four recommendations to improve it.

“I think one of the basic, basic principles of an office like this, is that they understand their role, they understand their scope, their jurisdiction, and their mandate, and if they’re unsure of that, that needs to be settled. That needs to be fixed and amended quickly,” said Montague.

However, Green Party coun. Pete Fry says Montague is taking the recommendations out of context.

“What we saw here was cherry picking the first clause — while there’s some problems with scope, pulling it out of context and using it as justification to unilaterally remove the integrity commissioner, and what’s most salient here, is suspend active investigations,” Fry said.

City staff will come back in the fall with options for a third-party review.