Bob Mackin
The Stanley Park Preservation Society scored a small victory Dec. 17, when a B.C. Supreme Court judge found that civic officials acted without authority in 2023 when they secretly hired a contractor to log thousands of Stanley Park trees.
Justice Bill Basran found the Vancouver Park Board did not breach a duty of procedural fairness when it made resolutions in October and December 2024 and July 2025 to proceed with contractor B.A. Blackwell and Associates.
But Basran did rule that the society and its members — Michael Robert Caditz, Katherine Rose Caditz, Anita Ahlmann Hansen and Jillian Margaret Maguire — are “entitled to a declaration that the city entered into the first supply agreement without jurisdiction because it did not have the required approval of the Park Board.”
Stumps and fallen trees near Lumbermen’s Arch in Stanley Park (Bob Mackin photo)
Next steps
The society filed the petition aimed at stopping the removal of any more trees, calling into question the decisions and methods to deal with dead or dying trees in the aftermath of the Hemlock looper moth infestation.
In August 2023, while the ABC majority city council and park board were both on summer hiatus, deputy city manager Karen Levitt secretly approved $2.1 million in emergency funding. Blackwell was hired the next month on a no-bid contract for the first phase of logging.
Caditz said his group is mulling whether to appeal Basran’s decision. The judge did not consider their major argument that Blackwell was in a conflict of interest, as both assessor of the tree damage and the contractor that oversaw logging.
“We believe that it was unreasonable for the [Park Board] commissioners to proceed with the Blackwell contracts without obtaining peer review or corroboration of Blackwell’s findings,” Caditz said.
Judge said
Basran ruled that staff had no “expressly delegated authority” to green light phase one.
Basran said the declaration is important “to avoid repetition of the error made with respect to the failure of the Park Board to properly authorize the phase one work completed pursuant to the first supply agreement.
“The spectre of these kinds of decisions being improperly made by the city or city staff, followed by work being concluded within short timeframes, and then an argument advanced that the decision is not reviewable because it is moot, will not be countenanced.”
The city has spent nearly $20 million so far on the logging operation. Of that, $11.1 million was approved behind closed doors by city council and became public through the society’s first unsuccessful bid to stop logging via a negligence lawsuit.
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