Vancouver to consider spending $1 per resident on lawsuit against oil companies

Vancouver City Council to consider spending $1 per resident on lawsuit against oil companies

Vancouver City Hall (City of Vancouver)

Should the City of Vancouver participate in a class action lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for their role in global climate change?

In a member motion that will be deliberated next week, Green Party city councillor Adriane Carr is urging Vancouver City Council to approve the municipal government’s financial involvement in the “Sue Big Oil” campaign as advocated by West Coast Environmental Law.

She wants city council to direct city staff to set aside up to $1 per Vancouver resident in the city’s draft 2023 operating budget to support the environmental activist group’s call for a lawsuit.

Based on Statistics Canada’s population estimate in late 2021, there are about 693,000 residents within the City of Vancouver. Carr’s motion would mean the municipal government would spend up to $693,000 on such a lawsuit.

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“Class action lawsuits, such as with the tobacco industry, have helped mitigate the root problem and costs,” she wrote in her motion.

Carr suggests this builds on city council’s 2019 decision to direct Mayor Kennedy Stewart to write to large fossil companies and request they contribute to climate change-related costs.

Under the previous Vision Vancouver-led governance, the City of Vancouver also took part in lawsuits against the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project. It was reported that the municipal government spent at least $343,000 between 2014 and 2018 on the unsuccessful endeavour.

But such a move also comes at a time when the city is facing cost pressures, and criticism for not focusing on its basic responsibilities including street cleanliness, proper maintenance of facilities, roads, and infrastructure, and other things directly under the city’s control and purview.

City staff have previously warned a 9% or 10% property tax hike in 2023 and an annual average of a 7% hike between 2022 and 2026 are possible as the municipality’s expenses are growing even without new inputs, especially with rampant inflation.

Late last year, for instance, the Vancouver Park Board requested city council to increase its 2022 operating budget for park rangers by $1.8 million to improve cleanliness, monitor safety hazards, and respond to issues. There has been a 1,153% increase in the number of reported park-related cases to rangers over the last five years. The requested operating funding would have allowed for the doubling of the number of park rangers, but city council only approved a $300,000 budget increase.

In February 2022, city council also rejected COPE city councillor Jean Swanson’s member motion to direct $10,000 from the city’s budget on the legal challenge against Quebec’s Bill 21. While there was a consensus in city council that the legislation prohibits public servants from wearing religious symbols is highly discriminatory, a majority of the elected body believed such a spending measure was well outside of the city’s purview. Swanson originally wanted the city to spend over $100,000.

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