Vancouver’s integrity commissioner throws out complaint by Mayor Sim’s top aides

• Briefly: Vancouver city hall’s integrity commissioner released two reports Aug. 2, ahead of a meeting where Mayor Ken Sim’s party could freeze her investigations. 

• Lisa Southern dismissed a complaint from Sim’s top two aides against two park board commissioners no longer with Sim’s ABC party. One of the park board officials complained that Sim used those aides to meddle in the park board.

• Next: ABC decided to call a third-party review into Southern’s office and may go one step further at a special Aug. 6 meeting. READ MORE BELOW

Bob Mackin

The integrity commissioner for Vancouver city hall and the park board dismissed a complaint from Mayor Ken Sim’s top two aides against two park board commissioners, four days before Sim’s ABC city council supermajority could vote to freeze all of her investigations.

The ABC dominated city council has called a special council meeting for Aug. 6 to rubber-stamp the July 24 direction to suspend Southern’s investigations during an independent review of the integrity commissioner’s office. 

In her Aug. 2 report, Lisa Southern said Sim’s chief of staff Trevor Ford and senior advisor David Grewal complained in March against former ABC parks commissioners Brennan Bastyovanszky and Scott Jensen, alleging they breached the city’s Code of Conduct when Bastyovanszky listened in on two recorded telephone calls between Jensen and Ford and Grewal.

Bastyovanszky and Jensen were two of three commissioners ejected from the ABC caucus last December over Sim’s sudden decision to ask the provincial government to abolish the elected park board. The ABC 2022 election platform promised to improve park board and make the city more transparent and accountable to citizens.

In their defence, the two commissioners told Southern that the recordings were part of Jensen’s “ordinary administrative practices, and did not disclose any improper political purpose.” They also told Southern that the complaint by Ford and Grewal was retaliation after Bastyovanszky complained to her office against Sim for alleging political interference in the park board. 

Southern’s report said the call on Sept. 20 included Ford referencing an “ethics complaint” against Bastyovanszky that was being referred to the “ethics commissioner.” A senior leader at the Pacific National Exhibition expressed concern that Bastyovanszky improperly obtained backstage access to the Stars of Drag concert at the Fair. 

The unnamed senior leader of the PNE complained to Southern, but “no formal investigation was conducted into the PNE complaint as it was written as hearsay or double hearsay,” she wrote.

In the Nov. 24 phone call, Ford and Grewal told Jensen that he should support Sim’s choice for the next park board chair and referred to an “active investigation” by Southern into Bastyovanszky’s conduct that would disallow him from being chair. 

Southern wrote that there was no such investigation. Bastyovanszky eventually became the chair after the Sim-caused caucus split. 

Southern said the recordings were not illegal, because one party to the conversation, Jensen, knew about the recordings. Southern also ruled that neither commissioner breached the Code of Conduct.

There was no evidence to support Ford and Grewal’s assertion that the recordings were made  in bad faith or for an unethical, unfair, unreasonable, or improper political purpose, Southern concluded.

“The complainants were silent about how a political purpose per se may be offside the Code of Conduct Policy. I reject the complainants’ unsupported position that if the recordings were made for any political purpose, they would be contrary to the Code of Conduct,” said the report.

Bastyovanszky and Jensen’s submission to Southern said that Bastyovanszky had made an earlier complaint to Southern that, through Ford and Grewal, Sim had “tried to interfere in Park Board governance.”

Jensen said he made the recordings because of a perception of “ongoing pressure tactics by Mr. Ford around Park Board decision making, and [Bastyovanszky and Jensen] were concerned about the accuracy of some of the information coming from Mr. Ford in this context.”

In another decision dated Aug. 2, Southern dismissed Bastyovanszky’s December and April complaints of retaliation on a technicality. 

“I dismiss the allegation that the respondent [Sim] brought a motion to council on Dec. 13, 2023, about dissolving the Park Board because he was unable to control Park Board commissioners’ decisions and that this was improper influence. Even if true, this allegation does not involve conduct regulated by the Code of Conduct By-law. Therefore, it lies outside my jurisdiction.”

Southern said the Code of Conduct Bylaw does not apply to Ford and Grewal, politically appointed city employees.

In February, Southern ordered Sim be reprimanded and requested to write a letter of apology to the third former ABC park board commissioner, Laura Christensen, for excluding her from a Dec. 5 meeting about the future of the park board. Sim publicly announced his plan to abolish park board elections the next day. The move requires provincial government approval.  

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