Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim targets 0% property tax increase in 2026 | Daily Hive

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim explores 0% property tax increase for 2026 operating budget

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim announcing the new Task Force on Business Growth on April 7, 2025. (Kenneth Chan)

Could there be a zero per cent increase in the City of Vancouver’s property tax increase to support the 2026 operating budget?

This morning, ABC Vancouver party members of Vancouver City Council approved Mayor Ken Sim’s motion directing City staff to explore three 2026 operating budget scenarios that enable a zero per cent property tax increase, a 1.5 per cent property tax increase, and a 2.5 per cent property tax increase.

For all three scenarios, there would still be a one per cent property tax increase for the capital infrastructure budget, specifically to help fund the expansion and renewal of rapidly aging and undersized sewer infrastructure. This one per cent annual increase to support sewerage and other utilities has been practiced for a few years.

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This motion was passed during the deliberations for City staff’s forthcoming detailed planning process for the 2026 operating budget, which will be finalized by City Council in late 2025. Ahead of today’s public meeting, City staff were proposing a 2026 property tax increase of five per cent to six per cent, plus one per cent for the infrastructural renewal.

“The budget outlook points to a five to six percent property tax increase just to maintain current service levels. But we’ve also heard very loud and clear that the residents of Vancouver, whether you’re a renter or an owner and the businesses of our city, can’t bear any more weight from increased fees and taxes,” said Sim during the deliberations.

“The cost of living in our city has reached a breaking point”

ABC elected officials asserted lower property taxes are necessary to account for economic uncertainty, growing living costs, and a very challenging climate for businesses to operate.

“It goes without saying that, in the face of global economic volatility and tariff threats, that improving our permitting process, pushing ahead with regulatory-related reforms, and finding efficiencies are more pressing than ever. And clearly, we can’t rely just on new revenue opportunities, process improvements, and advocating to senior government for help with infrastructure renewal. We have to do much more,” said the Mayor.

ABC city councillor Mike Klassen added, “We’re in a very tough inflationary time and the public has been extraordinarily clear to us, whether it’s on doorsteps, whether it’s in conversations, [and] whether it’s through the airwaves, the cost of living in our city has reached a breaking point. And we have to really work with our citizens and our residents and our businesses to make sure that we can make sure that we are being as fiscally responsible as possible.”

ABC city councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung asserted many restaurants are also facing bankruptcies and foreclosures from not only growing operating costs, but from pandemic-time loans now coming due. She also says there is a growing trend of residents moving out of Vancouver due to affordability issues.

“We also need to think about how do we be responsive and calibrate our services and where we put our City investments in order to continue to deliver quality services to residents in the areas that are really most important to them because this has really been about aligning alignment, while keeping those costs affordable for people because people are starting to move out and they cannot afford to stay here.”

However, the ABC-led City Council has also been criticized for approving some of the highest property tax increases in Vancouver’s history, which were made early on in their term.

Shortly after being elected, they approved a historic 10.7 per cent property tax increase for 2023 and a 7.5 per cent increase in 2024. There was a smaller increase of 3.9 per cent in 2025, which was the lowest annual increase in eight years.

Over the same period, the City’s annual operating budget also saw major increases, reaching over $2.3 billion in 2025 — up from under $2 billion in 2023.

“In a $2.2 billion budget, we should be able to find savings and efficiencies,” said Sim.

But ABC members have defended that earlier tax hike, due to the global inflationary environment emerging out of the pandemic at the time, along with the need to address pressing safety issues with safety and infrastructure renewal. This includes “fully staffing and funding” the Vancouver Police Department and Vancouver Fire Rescue Services.

“At the beginning of this term, we had some higher property tax increases because, from my perspective, we needed to right-size some of the core critical services that residents of Vancouver rely on and respond to a lot of the challenges we were seeing in the city. And that was particularly around public safety… And we see the benefits of that,” said Kirby-Yung.

Earlier criticism of the high operating budget and property tax increases also led to Sim forming a Mayor’s Budget Task Force, which released 17 recommendations in January 2024 and asserted the need for the City to have a more “disciplined” spending focus and explore new revenue generation opportunities.

ABC members also voiced concern over the growing burden of responsibilities downloaded onto the municipal government by the provincial and federal governments — particularly costly areas that fall outside the City’s traditional mandate.

They cited a previous City staff calculation that determined that the municipal government spent $219 million on provincial and federal responsibilities in 2021 alone. A subsequent analysis by the Mayor’s Budget Task Force estimated the City spent over $150 million in operating expenses and over $230 million in capital expenditures outside of traditional municipal service areas in 2023 alone. Kirby-Yung believes this figure is highly conservative.

Much of this revolves around the City’s high operating and capital expenses in addressing the major regional concentration of homelessness, mental health, and addiction issues in Vancouver, along with the resulting public safety and disorder challenges — pressures that account for a disproportionately high share of spending compared to other municipalities.

Vancouver represents 25 per cent of Metro Vancouver’s population, but its municipal government takes on a disproportionate financial and resource burden on the challenges that directly and indirectly come from being the location of 77 per cent of the 8,150 supportive housing units found across the region, 67 per cent of the 2,088 shelter beds, and 50 per cent of all social housing.

Climate-related initiatives are another area the City spends disproportionately.

In addition to the annual operating budget, which reached over $2.2 billion in 2024, there will also be considerations for the City’s new capital budget associated with new construction and investments.

$7 million annual cost savings from abolishing the Park Board

During the deliberations, cost savings from new efficiencies related to the proposed abolition of the separately elected Vancouver Park Board were also noted, with the City previously hoping to save at least $7 million annually from consolidating the governance responsibilities to the Mayor’s Office and City Council, and the day-to-day operating responsibilities to City departments.

“There is a huge potential beyond $7 million a year or $70 million over 10 years for us to save money just by running parks like every other jurisdiction in Canada,” said Sim.

When asked, City staff suggested the $7 million annual cost savings figure is highly conservative, as Park Board staff have been forbidden by the Park Board commissioners to discuss the transition process with their City staff counterparts.

The Park Board’s dissolution requires the provincial government to introduce legislation to amend the Vancouver Charter. These amendments are also expected to incorporate changes that align the Vancouver Charter with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the requirements of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act — a condition for the abolition to receive the support from local First Nations.

But so far, there has been a delay in introducing the legislation.

In response to an inquiry by Daily Hive Urbanized last month, B.C. Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs Ravi Kahlon said the provincial government had to prioritize economic matters this spring. Without providing a timeline, the Minister also noted that the provincial government will continue to work with the municipal government on the proposed legislative amendments.

“We know how important it is for local governments to have all the tools they need to provide the good value and good governance that people deserve. During the spring session, we prioritized legislation to secure our economy in the face of Trump’s unjustified tariff threats,” Kahlon told Daily Hive Urbanized. “We will continue to work with the City regarding their request,” the Minister continued.

The next opportunity to introduce the Vancouver Charter amendments will be the legislative session in Fall 2025.

While property taxes levied by Metro Vancouver’s municipal governments are relatively lower compared to other Canadian jurisdictions outside British Columbia, they do not account for the additional property-related taxes and fees imposed by the Metro Vancouver Regional District, TransLink, and the provincial government. The municipal portion accounts for roughly half of total property taxes paid.

Higher taxes and fees can be expected from the regional district moving forward to help cover its major infrastructural improvement expenses, particularly with new sewage treatment plants.

Compounding this, the region’s severe housing affordability and high cost of living mean residents must allocate a significantly larger share of their disposable income toward housing and everyday expenses.

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