Vancouver Council Won’t Sanction Mayor for Harassing Councillor

After questioning the integrity of Vancouver’s independent integrity commissioner, ABC councillors voted Tuesday against sanctioning Mayor Ken Sim for harassing COPE Coun. Sean Orr.

Jamie Pytel, a lawyer appointed by integrity commissioner Tracey Lee Lorenson to review complaints from Orr, had called for sanctions in the form of a written apology from Sim.

Pytel’s report detailing her investigation concluded that Sim broke the city’s code of conduct for councillors and the mayor on two occasions.

According to the report, the first incident happened on April 8, 2025, when Sim held a press conference in Vancouver City Hall with representatives from local Jewish organizations and alleged Orr had made antisemitic posts on social media in 2021, before he ran for office.

The report identified a second incident on Oct. 4, 2025, when Sim posted allegations to X that Orr had attended a protest affiliated with Samidoun, a designated terrorist group in Canada. Sim’s post also called on councillors to condemn antisemitism.

Following a seven-month investigation in which Pytel, a lawyer with Kingsgate Legal, interviewed Sim and Orr and reviewed their submissions, media coverage, press releases, social media posts and an audio recording of Sim’s press conference, the final report was released in mid-May.

She found Sim had violated the city’s code of conduct by holding a press conference organized by his office regarding an issue outside of his duties as mayor.

Pytel also found Sim personally attacked Orr when he suggested Orr was antisemitic and may incite hate or violence while in office.

Pytel said Orr was not told in advance about the press conference and so he wasn’t able to be at the event to refute Sim’s characterizations.

Pytel also found Sim’s social media post was a continuation of his harassment of Orr, suggesting Orr was in favour of both antisemitism and a terrorist entity.

She answered council’s questions about the report Tuesday, after which they voted against applying sanctions to the mayor.

“The code of conduct is enforced in the public interest; it’s not personal to me,” Pytel said. “It’s part of upholding the code of office.”

Sim could have called police if Orr represented a public safety issue, she added.

Pytel also noted that Sim acknowledged in his interview that he has previously contacted the integrity commissioner’s office “when in doubt.” She wrote that Sim could have asked the commissioner if holding a press conference was an appropriate response to concerns from some members of the Jewish community that Orr was antisemitic. But he did not.

ABC's Brian Montague questions the investigation

During council’s questioning of Pytel, ABC Coun. Brian Montague, a former officer with the Vancouver Police Department, submitted motions allowing him to ask Pytel three rounds of questions about her report, instead of one.

Montague asked why Pytel did not interview witnesses, as he would have if this had been a criminal police investigation. Pytel noted in her report that interviewing witnesses was unnecessary due to the public nature of the incidents under investigation.

Montague also asked if she investigated the protest Orr attended, which Pytel stated was outside her role as investigator of a code-of-conduct complaint.

“I mentioned in my report that it’s not appropriate for me to be assessing the nature of that event, just the actions by your council members with respect to the code of conduct,” Pytel said.

Montague moved to not approve sanctions for Sim and instead receive the report as information.

“I have serious concerns about the investigation itself — I’m not even sure I should use that word anymore,” said Montague.

He criticized Pytel for not meeting council before presenting the report and not interviewing police or investigating who organized the protest Orr attended. Pytel should have reviewed other people’s video of the rally and interviewed witnesses, he said.

Pytel told council those were all outside the scope of her investigation.

Montague said: “In my experience investigations should be peer reviewed to avoid what I mentioned earlier, which is investigation bias and tunnel vision.”

His motion passed as all ABC councillors present, including Montague, Sarah Kirby-Yung, Lenny Zhou, Lisa Dominato and Peter Meiszner, voted in favour.

Couns. Orr, Pete Fry, Rebecca Bligh and Lucy Maloney voted against the motion.

In her statement before voting, Bligh pushed back on Montague’s characterization of Pytel’s investigation and accused him of the unconscious bias he pinned on Pytel.

“What I’m hearing here is there’s very strong bias towards not understanding both sides of what’s been found here,” she said.

Bligh noted Pytel, not integrity commissioner Lorenson, conducted the investigation. That was due to a change made to the commissioner’s role by the current council “because of the unhappiness with the previous process. And now it sounds like there’s unhappiness with this process,” said Bligh.

Bligh, who is running for mayor under her own Vote Vancouver party, was kicked out of ABC in 2025 for publicly disagreeing with Sim, including on suspending the work of the integrity commissioner while the office was reviewed.

“One thing that’s been missed is this refusal to accept responsibility,” she said. “I think that we are held to a much higher standard in this chamber. And we ought to be, by the public.”

Sim was absent during this discussion and vote.

Previous attempts to shut down integrity commissioner

This is not the first time Montague has questioned the work of the integrity commissioner’s office.

In summer 2024 he introduced a motion to conduct a third-party review of the commissioner’s role, based on a line from then-commissioner Lisa Southern’s 2023 annual report that the code of conduct bylaw should be amended to clarify the scope of her role.

An approved amendment of Montague’s motion by fellow ABC Coun. Zhou would have suspended the commissioner’s work during the review.

At the time the integrity commissioner was investigating two complaints related to elected ABC members and the mayor’s chief of staff and senior adviser.

Fry stalled the vote on Zhou’s amendment by submitting his own complaint against ABC councillors for discussing city business in private meetings without non-ABC councillors present. The commissioner’s investigation later substantiated Fry’s claim that ABC councillors had breached the city’s code of conduct.

After significant public backlash, the commissioner’s work was allowed to continue during an independent review of the office conducted by Surrey’s former integrity commissioner Reece Harding.

Harding made 10 recommendations for change to Vancouver’s commissioner’s role in a 2025 report, including steps to make it more difficult to fire the commissioner for personal grievances against her work.

Harding also noted a fully independent integrity commissioner wouldn’t be possible unless the provincial government passed new legislation. The province introduced legislation for mandatory municipal codes of conduct, enforced by independent investigations, in April.

During Tuesday's discussion on whether to move forward with sanctions against Sim, Montague brought up concerns that the integrity office has been “weaponized.”

Harding acknowledged receiving similar concerns from councillors during his 2025 review of the integrity commissioner’s role.

But Fry, who is also running for mayor with the Green Party of Vancouver, noted council accepted Harding’s report and his recommendations for changes to the integrity commissioner’s role.

“It’s very unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation, yet again, with this council that repeatedly refuse to abide by things like the code of conduct, integrity commissioner, investigation and summary recommendations,” he said.

Not all allegations were substantiated

In her report, Pytel did not substantiate all of Orr’s allegations about Sim’s conduct in his initial complaint to the integrity commissioner’s office.

Pytel did not find city resources were used improperly, as she noted Sim’s statement that other councillors have held their own press conferences on city property where they criticized him and other ABC councillors.

Instead, her concern was that the issue was outside of the mayor’s job description.

Pytel also did not find that the press conference statements were part of ABC’s election campaign, as the byelection was over and the next municipal election was over a year away.

Lastly, Pytel did not find that Sim defamed Orr, as that is outside of the jurisdiction of the city’s code of conduct. She suggested the courts would potentially be a more appropriate forum for determining defamation.

Earlier this year Orr filed an unrelated defamation suit against Sim for telling Chinese-language media that Orr had publicly distributed illegal drugs on Christmas Day.

Orr maintains his social media posts that were the subject of Sim’s April 8, 2025, press conference were sarcastic responses to another poster’s antisemitic statements. Sim acknowledged in his interview with Pytel that “sarcasm isn't really picked up online.”

Sim’s press conference took place just days after Orr, running with municipal party COPE, defeated ABC candidates in a byelection. Orr was not yet sworn in as a city councillor.

Orr has also denied Samidoun was involved in the protest he attended, which he participated in and spoke at as a private citizen and not as a city councillor.

Orr’s presence at council during the deliberations over the report and vote on sanctions was brought up by Montague and Kirby-Yung as being inappropriate.

The sole COPE representative on council, Orr made just one statement before the vote was held, saying he had contacted the integrity commissioner’s office about attending council during this vote.

He did not mention if he had asked the commissioner about voting on sanctioning the mayor.

“They deemed that it was appropriate for me to be here. And you’ll notice that I haven’t commented on the report or used this as an opportunity to make further comments,” he said.

“I have done my due diligence and I hoped that council had done their due diligence, as well. But that was not the case.”