Vancouver passes motion to ask province to amend charter, remove elected park board

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This article was published 14/12/2023 (1031 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vancouver’s city council has passed a motion aimed at removing the city’s elected park board.

At a meeting Wednesday night after hours of public comments, council passed a motion by Mayor Ken Sim to ask the province to amend the Vancouver charter in order to abolish the board.

The vote passed along party lines, with Sim and all seven ABC Vancouver councillors voting in favour of the motion.

Three councillors, Green Party’s Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, as well as OneCity’s Christine Boyle, voted against the motion.

Boyle said in the post on social media platform X after the vote that the result was “disrespectful and undemocratic,” and called the process a “ramming forward” of a move that ABC did not campaign on during last year’s municipal election.

“There is no plan in place,” Boyle wrote. “No clarity around promises of cost savings. No involvement of unions or sports groups or community centre associations. People are furious — and rightly so.”

Fry echoed Boyle’s sentiments on social media.

“This is an unprecedented move for a mayor to effectively get rid of an elected board,” Fry wrote in a post directed to Sim. “In the event of a legal appeal, would taxpayers of Vancouver be on the hook to defend your ambition?”

Sim said previously while announcing the motion that the removal of the board was “long overdue” since the system was “broken.”

“It’s vitally important that at this moment in time that we take bold action to elevate the care of these essential spaces,” Sim said during the announcement of the motion earlier this month.

He said the elimination of the park board, which would bring park management under the direction of Vancouver’s city council, would represent a “new level of accountability.”

B.C. Premier David Eby said the motion was the first step among “many steps yet to go,” and the province needs to look at Vancouver’s transition plan to assess what’s proposed in terms of First Nations engagement and staff adjustments, among other topics.

Eby also discouraged any comparison to the Surrey policing dispute where the province and the city fought over legal jurisdiction on policy.

“I think it will be intuitive to most British Columbians that there’s a significant difference between how public safety is delivered when you call 911 … and how parks are governed in Vancouver,” Eby said. “With that said, this is an important transition.”

A statement from Municipal Affairs Minister Anne Kang echoed Eby’s comments, saying issues such as land ownership involving the park board will also need to be addressed.

“We respect the decision of Vancouver city council on the future of the park board,” Kang said.

“We are asking the City of Vancouver to provide the province with a transition plan to address these considerations so we can move forward together.”

The ABC party had six commissioners elected to the seven-member Park Board, but three were reportedly removed from the party and are openly opposed to Sim’s move to abolish the elected body.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 14, 2023.