Outgoing Mayor’s Chief of Staff Lands Job at VPD

Trevor Ford has a new job with the Vancouver Police Department.

The former chief of staff to former Vancouver mayor Ken Sim was recruited to a six-month contract with the municipal police force, Matthew Ramsey, public relations director with the Vancouver Police Department, told The Tyee via email.

Ford, who stepped down as Sim’s chief of staff to become A Better City Vancouver or ABC’s election campaign director in May, will work in a research capacity to produce a report that “examines identified challenges and gaps in the use of body-worn cameras and their impact and efficiency on the broader criminal justice system,” Ramsey’s email read.

The report is for an outside organization the police department is a member of, Ramsey added.

The Tyee contacted Ford for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

City Coun. Lucy Maloney, one of three incumbent councillors re-elected to council in last month’s municipal election, told The Tyee she was surprised by Ford’s hiring given the former ABC-dominated council’s close relationship with the police department.

“And then pretty substantial increase in funding given to the VPD in consecutive budgets,” said Maloney, referring to the 50 per cent increase in police funding, from $349.65 million in 2022 to $525.5 million in 2026, since ABC formed a majority on council.

“I think the optics of the VPD receiving a very large amount of funding from the city council while Trevor Ford had so much influence, and then Trevor Ford being given a job, I think that it’s troublesome.

“I think it just looks bad.”

Maloney wondered whether others had been able to apply for the position, or if Ford had been the only person considered.

“Because the VPD is obviously a government agency,” she said.

“I think that the general public, some of whom may be bothered by this perception, may like to know more details about whether there was an open recruitment process whereby qualified candidates could apply.”

VPD’s Ramsey told The Tyee that the police force offered Ford the temporary position before he stepped down as Sim’s chief of staff earlier this spring to run ABC’s election campaign. Going into the election, ABC held a majority on city council, but voters handed ABC’s left-wing opponents a decisive victory and just one ABC councillor, Mike Klassen, was re-elected.

Ford did not apply for the VPD role, Ramsey added, and there was no open hiring process that would have allowed others to apply for the temporary contract position.

Initially hired as the director of operations in the mayor’s office in 2022, Ford was appointed chief of staff on an interim basis in June 2023 until he took over the role permanently from November 2023.

He served in the role until this past April when Ford stepped down to become ABC’s election campaign director.

In February 2024, Vancouver Police Board member Faye Wightman resigned from the police’s civilian oversight board, citing political interference from Mayor Sim’s staff.

In an interview with Vancouver is Awesome reporter Mike Howell, Wightman specifically cited Ford’s presence at in-camera police board meetings.

She also alleged Ford had instructed board members, who (other than the mayor who serves as board chair) are supposed to be independent from the city and the police, to fire the board’s executive director Stephanie Johanssen.

Later in 2024, Ford’s name appeared in a report from city Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern. She found that Ford had inaccurately claimed that then-park board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky was under investigation by Southern’s office, and had told Bastyovanszky that he could not serve as park board chair because of the open investigation (which Southern had already confirmed to the city manager did not exist). Ford disputed Southern’s findings.

Bastyovanszky, along with then-park board commissioners Scott Jensen and Laura Christensen, left ABC in 2023 when they did not agree with Sim’s attempt to dismantle the park board.

According to Ford’s LinkedIn profile, prior to working for ABC in their 2022 campaign and then in the mayor’s office, he worked in communications with Communica Public Affairs.

Ford’s education background, including a masters and part of a PhD program, is in Canadian history.