Vancouver just received the kind of report no city should be proud of.

Its Integrity Commissioner has found that Mayor Ken Sim and (what were then) his seven ABC Vancouver Party councillors repeatedly breached the Vancouver Charter’s most basic requirement: that the people’s business must be done in the open. (One councillor, Rebecca Bligh, has since been ousted from the party.)

This isn’t about arcane law. Section 165.1 of the Charter is the very foundation of municipal legitimacy. It requires council to meet publicly, save for a few narrow exceptions. The idea is simple: decisions must be debated and shaped where citizens can watch, weigh in, and hold elected representatives to account.

The Commissioner’s report released Monday lays bare that this principle was treated as an inconvenience by the mayor and his team. Draft amendments to important policies—the Climate Justice Charter, Moberly Park funding—were worked out in private. Regular caucus meetings in the mayor’s office, conducted with a quorum, discussed council business in ways that moved decisions forward. Chats on the Signal app and personal email chains served as unrecorded, auto-deleting channels to hash out motions before they ever saw daylight.

The defence? That these were merely caucus discussions, not........

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