Bob Mackin
During his campaign for re-election on Oct. 17, Mayor Ken Sim has declared Vancouver safer because his ABC party city council majority has spent more on the Vancouver Police Department.
But, not even Vancouver City Hall is safe from crime.
Nobody was arrested Sept. 30 when vandals poured red paint on the Capt. George Vancouver statue and scrawled graffiti on city hall steps.
Indigenous protesters at Vancouver City Hall on Sept. 30, 2026. (Credit: Instagram/Fatsjaffer).
What happened
City hall was closed because of the Truth and Reconciliation Day holiday when the group of radical Indigenous protesters arrived to question Vancouver’s “City of Reconciliation” branding by desecrating the statue of the 140-year-old city’s namesake.
Englishman Vancouver explored and charted the British Columbia coast in 1792-1794 for the Royal Navy.
In a video posted on Instagram, one of the four paint-splattered women addressed the camera. She said the protest was in reaction to the previous weekend’s Second Sons white nationalist protest at the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc reserve in Kamloops.
Under investigation
Vancouver Police Department (VPD) public information officer Const. Darren Wong said officers responded to a report of protesters dismantling scaffolding and defacing the statue with paint.
“While the VPD supports lawful protest, damaging property and vandalism are not acceptable,” Wong told theBreaker. “Due to protester behaviour, and out of concern for officer safety, the decision was made not to make arrests at the scene. We are actively investigating this incident and are seeking to gather evidence to recommend criminal charges.”
ABC police support
In the months before Sim’s 2022 election, three high-profile cases of Indigenous women going missing in Vancouver and being found dead: Chelsea Poorman at a vacant, foreign-owned Shaughnessy mansion, Noelle O’Soup in a Downtown Eastside rooming house and Tatyanna Harrison, on a yacht in Richmond.
The advocacy group Battered Women’s Support Services criticized the VPD for mishandling investigations.
Also in 2022, during the annual Women’s Memorial March, protesters splattered the “Gassy Jack” Deighton statue in Gastown with red paint before toppling it. The statue was not replaced and nobody was charged.
The Vancouver Police budget has grown by $150 million to almost half-a-billion dollars under Sim’s ABC majority city council.
Subscribe to theBreaker.news on Substack. Find out how: Click here.
