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Column: Vancouver’s only OneCity councillor cleared of wrongdoing by the integrity commissioner
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Vancouver Coun. Christine Boyle has been cleared of wrongdoing by the city’s integrity commissioner, after Mayor Ken Sim launched a formal complaint against her for publicly discussing her own vote in a closed-door meeting.
Sim filed the complaint on March 7, but it only became public following Vancouver integrity commissioner Lisa Southern’s investigation and Sept. 29 final report.
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On March 2, city hall announced council’s decision, taken in a closed-door January meeting, to change the “living wage program,” which effectively meant pay cuts for the city’s lowest-paid employees and contractors.
After Boyle, council’s only OneCity representative, publicly said she voted against changing the living wage policy, Sim, who leads the ABC majority, filed the code of conduct complaint.
While much of council’s business is handled in open meetings, they also regularly meet privately, or in camera, to discuss certain types of issues. The results of such decisions are often made public eventually, but voting records are not.
Southern’s report says that after the January meeting, Boyle sought guidance from the integrity commissioner’s office and city legal department on what she could, and could not, say about an in camera decision after its public release.
On March 1, city staff notified council members about plans for publicly releasing the living-wage decision. The memo asked council not to comment before the news release, and advised them could publicly indicate their view afterwards, provided they did “not disclose anything said or voted by the other councillors during the in camera meeting,” the report says.
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However, Southern’s report notes, this direction contradicted a memo sent to council in 2022, shortly after the last election, outlining general policies and stating that council members should not publicly state their own votes on in camera matters.
Boyle did not breach the city’s code of conduct, Southern wrote, but the investigation showed the city has been “unclear and inconsistent” on this issue, and she recommended the city adopt a clear policy.
Sim’s director of communications, Harrison Fleming, said by email that the mayor’s office appreciates Southern’s diligence, and “looks forward to working with council to develop a clear policy around in camera meetings to ensure clarity.”
Soon after Sim filed the complaint in March, Southern asked him if he would be open to an informal resolution. Sim declined, so the matter proceeded to a formal, months-long investigation.
Southern’s investigation then included reviewing the written response from Boyle’s legal counsel, city bylaws, internal memos, operations manuals, communications between Boyle and city staff, and other evidence. At that point, Sim “was given an opportunity to provide a response to those submissions, which he declined to do,” Southern wrote.
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There is no recent precedent for a sitting Vancouver mayor launching a code of conduct complaint against a colleague and refusing an informal resolution, said Kevin Quinlan, who worked in the Vancouver mayor’s office under Vision Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson between 2008 and 2018 in several roles, finishing as chief of staff.
“I don’t remember anything like that,” Quinlan said.
Sim could have likely avoided this result by making a quick phone call to a city lawyer, Quinlan said.
“There’s so many different off-ramps that he could have taken to avoid this blowing up in his face. That, to me, is the thing that’s a real head-scratcher,” he said.
“When I read the ruling, it just came across like the political equivalent of stepping on a rake,” Quinlan said. “To set that process in motion and then have it backfire on you like that, it’s just this total own-goal. You don’t want to ask a question unless you already know what the answer’s gonna be.”
Boyle called the whole episode “unfortunate and unnecessary.”
Neither the mayor nor any of his staffers reached out to Boyle before filing the complaint, she said, “and if they had, I would have happily let him know all the work I had done to seek clarification on the rules.”
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“That would have potentially averted the whole situation. But Mayor Sim chose not to take that route.”
Boyle paid about $7,000 out-of-pocket for outside legal advice to deal with the complaint, she said, and she is unclear on whether it will be reimbursed. She also doesn’t know how much this kind of full commissioner’s investigation costs taxpayers.
The city’s rules say that one calendar year needs to pass before council can reconsider the living wage policy, Boyle said, and she plans to introduce a motion on the subject in a public council meeting at her first opportunity next year.
“It will be interesting, then, to see how that public discussion goes,” she said.
dfumano@postmedia.com
twitter.com/fumano
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