EXCLUSIVE: Vancouver mayor-elect Ken Sim on getting to work right away

ABC Vancouver

On Saturday night, Ken Sim and every single other ABC Vancouver candidate running in the 2022 civic election were elected into office with a commanding lead over all rival candidates, including securing a super majority in City Council.

At 3 pm Sunday, just 14 hours after polls fully closed, the first transition team meeting got underway to get the ball rolling — the team was already working to quickly switch gears from campaign mode to the governing authority empowered by a clear mandate from voters.

From the party’s headquarters near Broadway-City Hall Station, an hour before the transition meeting, Daily Hive Urbanized exclusively carried out Mayor-elect Ken Sim’s first and only post-election interview this weekend following ABC’s sweeping victory.

Sim and his seven city councillors are not wasting time before the inauguration ceremony on November 7.

“We don’t want to come in unprepared, so we’re going to hit the ground running. We literally came off from an election last night, and we’re already working on transition,” said Sim.

“We’re working over the next three weeks to make sure we hit the ground running.”

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The transition team includes not only Sim, all of ABC’s city councillors, and members of the ABC board, but also former politicians and city managers. Former Surrey mayor Dianne Watts is co-chairing the transition team with ABC campaign manager Kareem Allam, and the team also entails former Vancouver city councillor Tung Chan and former Vancouver deputy city manager James Ridge.

Sim says they fully intend to get going with their 94-point platform plan over the first 100 days, starting with making immediate measures to tackling crime and public safety issues.

As promised, they will hire 100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses to get going with the plan of expanding the existing Car 87/88 program of pairing a police officer and mental health nurse in an unmarked vehicle for non-emergency mental health calls. While critics have questioned whether it is technically feasible to achieve these workforce numbers, there is a strategy in place to work towards it.

“Vancouver residents really gave us that mandate last night, so it’s going to get pushed,” he said.

Targeted help will also be on the way for Chinatown and its businesses, cultural organizations, and residents. Despite facing increasingly frequent instances of violent attacks, property damage, theft, public disorder issues, and other incidents that are anti-Asian in nature, the Chinatown community’s pleas for real and effective help from the municipal government have largely been ignored to date.

Sim says Chinatown’s businesses and residents will benefit from not only the expansion of Car 87/88, but also measures such as establishing a new City Hall office in Chinatown.

“The reason for this City Hall office in Chinatown is that we want our elected officials to go down there on a regular basis. We truly believe that if you want to solve the problem, you need to walk the shop floor to understand what the residents, businesses, and community stakeholders are going through,” he said.

“There are a lot of big and small things we have planned for Chinatown and we’re excited about it.”

Despite documentation of evidence and the impassioned testimonials of businesses, residents, and even tourists affected or victimized by violent attacks and other crime and public disorder, a small but vocal group of activists remain adamant that crime is not an issue due to “statistics.”

Furthermore, contrary to activist narratives, the provincial government’s prolific offender report released last month deemed that “for several reasons, including decreased crime reporting, official reported crime statistics may not provide an accurate picture of crime trends in BC,” and they cited Vancouver Police Department’s account that over the first three months of 2022, 40.5% of non-emergency calls went unanswered due to a lack of capacity. There was a 24.7% increase in the number of unanswered calls compared to the last three months of 2021.

“I think that for people who say crime is not an issue for them, well that’s great. We want to make sure people feel safe. But I can tell you, there are a lot of people who do not share that feeling when you have anti-Asian hate crimes up by over 500% in Vancouver, and violent crimes against the Jewish community across Canada up by 733%,” said Sim. He is set to become the first Mayor of Vancouver who is Chinese-Canadian, Asian, or a person of colour.

“You have four random assaults a day, and a lot of people do not feel safe in the city. I’m going to be the mayor for all Vancouverites, not just the ones who don’t feel safe. We should celebrate our wins and let’s address the challenges that we have.”

The hostility by activists against Chinatown and other people and organizations who may have a different perspective on a wide range of matters can particularly be seen online.

When asked to further elaborate on his election night speech that decisions should not be made on the advice of lobbyists, polls, activists, and whatever is trending on Twitter, Sim told Daily Hive Urbanized there are “people with special interests or people who are really excited about an issue, but when you stand back and look at everything, that might not be the best position.”

“So what we want to do is take a very pragmatic approach to all the challenges and opportunities that are presented in front of us, and we’ll take an actual science-based approach and talk to healthcare providers and professionals, teachers, parents, and really, just about everyone. We’ll just make better decisions, although sometimes the better decisions aren’t the most popular decisions over the short term or they may make more sense over the longer term.”

Rival left-wing and progressive candidates, parties, and activists frequently label Sim and ABC as “right wing,” but in reality the party and candidates gravitate in the middle of the political spectrum — they are indeed centrists and centre-right. ABC’s landslide victory also makes this quite evident.

“We’re focused on our 94-point platform that came across the city from different ideologies. There’s no left or right in our policies, it’s just a collection of great ideas and a pragmatic approach to solving big challenges,” said Sim.

“I actually think diversity of thought and lived experience is something we should celebrate. When we have people of different sides of the political spectrum who have different ideas, we really need to look at them as they may see something we don’t see. I personally have never tried to live in an echo chamber where everyone agrees to everything — it’s actually quite dangerous if you’re ever in a situation like that. And if you’re ever in a situation like that, you should really give your head a shake on what’s going on here as you probably have group think or will probably miss something.”

As for the other big area of target in his first 100-days plan, it is housing, specifically getting the ball rolling on fixing the municipal government’s archaic permitting system, which clearly adds to housing affordability issues when projects are stalled, and costs begin to add up from both delays and expensive regulations and limitations.

Over the past four years, the outgoing City Council made some attempts to reform and speed up permitting, but they have not made the big dent they had hoped for with the changes implemented to date. Much of the actions so far have come from the Task Force on fixing permitting, created last year, led by the City manager.

“A lot of people have strategies, but it comes down to execution. You can talk about rezoning all you want and approving projects, but if you don’t have the permitting process sped up, it’s all for naught. Our strategy is to make sure whatever gets built in the city depending on what it’s zoned for, currently or in the future, or what the plans are for big developments in local neighbourhoods, people will get their permits faster,” said Sim.

“If we do that, we’ll leave it up to the not-for-profit and for-profit developers to build what they intend to do faster. It doesn’t sound super sexy, but it’s highly effective.”

Conceived during the campaign, the “3x3x3x1” permit approval system targets three days to approve home renovations, three weeks to approve single-family homes and townhouses, three months to approve professionally designed multi-family and mid-rise projects, and one year to approve a high-rise tower or large-scale project.

Within the housing portfolio, Sim will also work on reforming community amenity contributions (CACs) that developers offer in exchange for rezonings and mainly market-based building uses. Currently, City staff have a practice of establishing project-to-project CACs based on one-on-one negotiations with developers, but ABC will push to simplify this by reforming the system to simple formulas.

Lengthy negotiations that can take up to years, if successful at all, add to costs and delays in delivering much-needed housing supply. And without having a more accurate idea of the input costs before putting together a building development plan, it also creates upward pressure on overall project costs. The uncertainty of CACs in Vancouver has driven some builders to suburban municipalities, where the framework is simpler and more predictable.

“When it comes to CACs, we’re big believers that we need to provide certainty by defining the formula, and let builders know what the formula is before they buy the property, so that they can price it into their business plans and brings more certainty to the process. This allows builders to make better decisions on whether to build in Vancouver,” said Sim.

Fixing permitting, amending CACs, and implementing ABC’s myriad of policies entirely depends on working with City staff, the bureaucracy, which has acquired a not-so-hidden politicized flair over the years.

After Gregor Robertson’s Vision Vancouver was first elected in 2008, they overhauled the bureaucracy and aligned it with their new mantra of what a municipal government should be responsible for, beginning with changes from the very top with the firing of longtime City manager Judy Rogers within weeks after the election. At the time, it was seen as a stunning move by the novice government.

“As Mayor and City Council, our role is to provide vision for the direction of the City, and make sure we have the right leaders in place in the City to provide them with the right resources. Right now, our view is that we have amazing people in the City of Vancouver,” said Sims.

“Some of our systems are broken, but we have great people working in the broken systems, and if we just fix the systems we’ll create a great environment for people to work in. I’m very optimistic — when you have a strong mandate in City Council and the Mayors office, it can provide a lot of guidance and assurance to the people who are working at the City. We’re looking forward to that challenge and we’re excited about it.”

Starting on November 7, ABC Vancouver will effectively be steering the ship of the City of Vancouver. Its rise to power represents the first time voters in nearly a generation elected a centrist/centre-right party or a makeup of government that is not left-wing/progressive.

Vancouver residents can fully expect Sim to provide a fresh perspective on how to run a major organization based on his background and experience in business. Economic development, investment attraction, and job creation will be placed on a much higher pedestal than previous administrations, especially the outgoing one.

Sim graduated from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, worked as an accountant at KPMG and investment banker at CIBC World Markets, and is the co-founder and owner of both Nurse Next Door and local bagel shop Rosemary Rocksalt.

Over the four previous terms spanning between 2008 and early November 2022, the City has been led by left-leaning/progressive groups — largely by the decade-long control under Vision Vancouver. The makeup of City Council in the current term ending early next month is a mixed bag of mainly left-leaning/progressive officials, including outgoing Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

“I’ve always believed that I want to be the Mayor of all Vancouverites, and our team of city councillors, Park Board commissioners, and School Board trustees represent everyone,” said Sim, when asked what his message is to Vancouverites who did not vote for ABC.

“As for the people who didn’t vote for me personally, well I haven’t earned their vote yet, and I will try to earn their trust, respect, and support by working politics differently. It doesn’t matter if you voted for us or not, I’m the Mayor of Vancouver for everyone who is in Vancouver, regardless of ideology.”

ABC secured eight of the 11 seats (this tally includes the mayoral seat) in Vancouver City Council, six of the seven seats in the Vancouver Park Board, and five of the nine seats in the Vancouver School Board.

All candidates fielded by ABC were elected, and they all won the most votes in each of the three elected bodies — ahead of all rival candidates — by a wide margin.

Even the ABC candidates with the least number of votes still came ahead by about 20,000 votes in each of the three bodies, against the first rival candidate below the dominating ABC herd in the respective body.

For the mayoral seat, Sim won 85,732 votes, beating Stewart’s 49,593 votes — a staggering difference of over 36,000 votes. Sim’s number of votes exceeds the record of 83,529 won by Robertson in the 2014 election.

This is the first time a Vancouver mayoral candidate defeated an incumbent since 1980, when Mike Harcourt beat two-term Jack Volrich.

“We were just working really hard, knocking on a bunch of doors, meeting as many people as possible, and then let the cards fall wherever they did,” Sim told Daily Hive Urbanized today during the interview.

“Were we incredibly happy? Absolutely. We felt good about where we were. I don’t think in our wildest imaginations it would be this resounding.”

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