Bob Mackin
The former chief of staff to the Mayor of Vancouver said he had no role in a post on X that alleged police caught Ken Sim driving under the influence.
Kareem Allam responded June 30 with his defence statement against Sim’s May 23-filed B.C. Supreme Court defamation lawsuit.
Sim accused Allam and real estate developer Alex G. Tsakumis of intending to damage his reputation by falsely accusing him of drunk driving. They both deny Sim’s accusations and none of the allegations has been tested in court.
Kareem Allam (Twitter)
Tsakumis fought back in his June 30 defence statement, saying Sim’s “true reputation” is that of someone who occasionally consumes alcohol to excess and attends events as a candidate or elected official in a state of intoxication.
In Allam’s statement of defence, he said he spoke with Tsakumis, a longtime acquaintance with whom he is politically aligned, in February 2023. Allam, who was Sim’s chief of staff at the time, said he told Tsakumis that he had received a troubling phone call from a senior staff member in the mayor’s office. The staffer informed him that Sim had been stopped by Vancouver Police officers for driving while intoxicated and that officers allowed Sim to leave without being charged.
Allam considered it a potential crisis and Tsakumis told him that he had heard the account elsewhere. He said Tsakumis reminded him of the 2003 incident in which then-Premier Gordon Campbell was caught driving under the influence in Hawaii.
According to Allam, Tsakumis “advised [Allam] that if the account turned out to be true, the defendant should advise the plaintiff to provide a mea culpa as former Premier Campbell had done.”
Allam said he was fired days later.
In November 2023, Tsakumis posted on X that Sim had been caught driving drunk and let go by police.
Allam’s defence statement said he had no intention that the statements to Tsakumis early in the year be republished and he had no involvement in Tsakumis’s posts on X.
In February 2025, the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner (OPCC) cleared Sim of the drunk driving allegations, but refused to release its report. OPCC said Sim was not the target of its investigation. Instead, it focused on the conduct of Vancouver Police officers.
Allam’s filing, by lawyer Wes McMillan, said that if a judge deems his statements to be defamatory, then he is protected by the defences of justification, fair comment, and qualified privilege.
“Insofar as the words consist of expressions of opinion, they are fair comment on a matter of public interest, recognizable as such by the ordinary reasonable person, specifically: the conduct of and standards to which elected officials are to be held; and the discretion exercised by the police in the performance of their duties,” said Allam’s statement of defence.
Last month, Allam said he is pondering whether to run against Sim in the 2026 civic election.
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