Vancouver Asked Eby to Close the Public-Hearing Loophole. He Should.
Victoria has repeatedly rewritten local housing rules. Now Vancouver says it needs provincial authority to stop out-of-country callers from clogging local public hearings.
Vancouver’s latest public-hearing controversy is not complicated. City council was debating land-use decisions for Vancouver. Some callers were in California.
Daily Hive reports Mayor Ken Sim sent a July 23 letter to Premier David Eby and Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Christine Boyle asking the province to amend the Vancouver Charter so only Canadian residents may register to speak at Vancouver public hearings and other council proceedings. The request followed the city’s Villages Plan hearing, which Daily Hive says ran over three dates and ended just before 1 a.m. on July 23 after more than 340 registered speakers.
CityNews Vancouver reported that several California callers joined the July 22 Villages Plan hearing. Sim called the situation “foreign interference” and said only people affected by land-use decisions should speak before council, not callers from Southern California.
The clearest example was a caller identified by CityNews as “Christina.” Councillors asked whether she had ever been to Vancouver. She said she had not. They asked whether she was a hotel worker or union member. She said she was neither. Asked whether she had called into other city councils, she said she had called into meetings in Los Angeles and Ontario.
That record does not prove every outside speaker was acting improperly. It does prove the current system can let people with no obvious local stake consume scarce public-hearing time while residents, applicants and affected neighbourhoods wait.
The City of Vancouver’s July 21/28 public-hearing agenda states that electronic participation is authorized under Vancouver Charter section 559.03 and lists registration by web, phone or in person. The posted registration information does not list Vancouver, B.C. or Canadian residency as a requirement. That is the gap Vancouver is asking Victoria to close.
The NDP cannot have it both ways. Eby’s government has shown no hesitation about overriding municipal zoning, density and housing-process rules when it believes local governments are moving too slowly. If the province can dictate where cities must allow more homes, it can answer a basic process question: who gets to occupy the microphone at a local land-use hearing?
A careful fix would not silence legitimate expertise. Sim’s reported request contemplated discretion for invited experts, other governments and people whose participation is necessary to inform council. That is sensible. A hearing can remain open, accessible and evidence-based without allowing anonymous out-of-country call-ins to swamp a local queue.
Public hearings are already under pressure: long meetings, scripted presentations, translation and accessibility needs, and high-stakes housing decisions. The answer is not to make participation smaller for Vancouverites. It is to make participation more accountable to the people who live with the consequences.
Eby and Boyle should say clearly whether they will amend the Vancouver Charter, on what timeline, and with what safeguards. Local democracy is not strengthened when the loudest voices can be dialled in from anywhere. It is strengthened when affected communities can actually be heard.