Vancouver Park Board to hire legal team for fight against mayor's abolition plan

Vancouver Park Board approves first steps towards potential legal challenge against mayor's abolition plan

Vancouver Park Board headquarters office in Stanley Park. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

As can be expected, on Monday evening, Vancouver Park Board commissioners voted along their new loyalty lines in approving retaining legal counsel as the first step towards potentially stopping Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC party’s plan to abolish the separately elected body overseeing parks and recreation.

The three former ABC commissioners — now completing the remainder of their term as independents, and opposing Sim’s plan — sided with Green commissioner Tom Digby, who put forward the request.

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The legal counsel will analyze the mayor’s plan, and determine the level of probability that a judicial review could stop the Park Board’s abolition in its tracks. An amendment by independent commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky to seek legal opinion on whether the mid-term abolition of the elected body violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was also approved.

“With this elevated level of risk, out of the fiduciary responsibility to this board and our 135 years of predecessors, I thought it’s timely for the seven of us to agree. If there are to be any changes, we want to be sure that legally, the City is acting correctly. If not the City is not doing things properly, then all of the motions will fail anyway, and it’ll be challenged at a later date,” said Digby during the meeting.

Digby suggested the estimated $20,000 cost — which he deemed to be a “modest” expense to “defend ourselves and our very existence” — would come from the Park Board’s general manager’s budget.

“There’s no better money spent to ensure that this board dots its i’s and crosses its t’s,” said independent commissioner Scott Jensen.

“We’re elected here not just to preserve and protect green spaces and parks and recreation facilities, but also to protect this board. For us to simply walk away without doing all the due diligence to ensure this board outdates us all is a great way to ensure this money is well spent.”

ABC commissioner Angela Haer said there is a risk the legal effort could later cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if it expands into a formal legal challenge in court against the abolition plan. Digby floated the idea that perhaps the mayor will “in his good sense withdraw” his proposal, to which Haer quipped that that would be “wishful thinking.”

ABC commissioner Marie-Claire Howard added, “I find it difficult to reconcile that you are raiding the general manager’s budget, which I’m sure is not huge,” before calling the current elected Park Board a “lame duck” entity, which Bastyovanszky took offence to.

The mayor’s office, the City manager, and other City staff are currently working with the provincial government towards making the necessary legislative amendments to the Vancouver Charter to remove the requirement for a separately elected body overseeing the parks and recreation system. Its governance and responsibilities would be transferred to the mayor, City Council, and City staff.

Sim also named five public individuals to the Park Board Transition Working Group in late January.

The provincial government has indicated that the City must meet several conditions, including consulting with the three First Nations and addressing parkland ownership and the future of existing Park Board workers. Some of these conditions relating to parkland ownership and the existing workers were addressed by the City manager in late January.

It has been stated that discussions with the three First Nations are ongoing, with only the Musqueam providing their formal support to date, and the Tsleil-Waututh expressing their willingness to take part in the discussions. However, the Squamish have remained publicly quiet on this front.

The City manager is expected to provide another update on the proposed governance transition process during this Wednesday’s public meeting with City Council.

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