It’s time to call Ken Sim to account over accountability

Budget Task Force’s most basic recommendation not implemented

VANCOUVER (July  3, 2026) –  In April 2023, after imposing a 10.7% tax increase on beleaguered ratepayers, Ken Sim appointed a panel of six financial analysts and accountants to find the efficiencies he had promised voters in the 2022 campaign.

They produced their report some nine months later. The aim was to steer Vancouver “towards a more financially sustainable and operationally efficient future.”  An Implementation Oversight Committee was established to track action on the task force’s 17 recommendations. The committee’s final report will be presented to Council on Monday, July 6.

The first recommendation – to Establish a Policy Articulating the City of Vancouver’s Core Jurisdiction – was abandoned.  But even with no policy articulating core jurisdiction, the steps taken to implement  the next recommendation to Manage spending beyond the City’s core jurisdiction are laid out in the report.

Ken Sim is campaigning on “Back to Basics.” But he’s ignoring his own panel’s recommendation to define what the basics are.

TEAM for a Livable Vancouver has consistently campaigned on keeping expenditures within civic jurisdiction.

Recommendation No. 5  was to create a Council Finance Committee “composed of Council members with financial expertise and a strong interest in budgetary matters.” This had the laudable goal of ensuring councillors and the public are aware of the implications of budget decisions, and upholding the Vancouver Charter’s requirements that the Council provide budgetary directive in public forums. 

But this recommendation was ditched — or as the report says, “not implemented by City Council.”  Was nobody interested or qualified?  Where was Mayor Sim, FCPA?

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