← Council Meeting February 24, 2026
Okay, good morning everyone and welcome to the Vancouver City Council meeting of Tuesday, February the 24th, 2026. This meeting is being held in person and by electronic means. Council members and the public may participate by either method. Any members joining electronically are reminded to enable video to confirm quorum. This meeting is being live streamed on the city's website and YouTube and meeting progress will be updated regularly on ex-Advanced City Clerk. Now, in case of an emergency where we have to evacuate the building, please direct your attention to go beyond the glass doors and turn left at the pillar and please walk down the stairs. If those doors are obstructed for any reason whatsoever, please note the four side doors here. Also, if you need mobility assistance, please stay in place and one of our super friendly, helpful team members will come and help you out of the room here. I also want to note there is the defibrillator at the end of the chamber here. I would like to acknowledge that we're hosting today's council meeting on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and TTsleil-Waututh First Nations and do want to thank them for their generosity, hospitality and love and care. They show this great land that we get to live and play on. And I also want to acknowledge all of our team members throughout the city of Vancouver who work incredibly hard every single day to make this place a better city. So with that, can we please have roll call?
Mayor Sim in the chair. Councillor Kirby Young. Councillor Domino. Councillor Bligh. Councillor Frey.
Councillor Montague. Councillor Klassen. Councillor Meiszner.
Councillor Shou. Councillor Orr. And Councillor Maloney. You have quorum, Mayor Sim.
Great, thank you very much. Okay, so the plan for today, we're going to break at noon for lunch, followed by the in-camera meeting, return at 3 p.m. to continue to deal with the remainder of the agenda, adjourn or recess by 5 p.m. as we do have a public hearing at 6 p.m. In-camera, council is required to meet in-camera later this week. The reasons and authority under the Vancouver Charter are listed in the agenda. Would someone like to move a motion to move into in-camera?
Councillor Dominato, seconded by Councillor Klassen. All those in favour, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously.
Minutes. Minutes, one are from the public hearing on January the 20th, 22nd, and 27th of 2026. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Great, thank you, Councillor Kirby-Young. Seconded by Councillor Meiszner. All those in favour, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously. Minutes two are from the public hearing on January the 22nd and 27th, 2026. Are there any corrections? Someone like to move? Great, thank you, Councillor Kirby-Young. Seconded by Councillor Montague. All those in favour, say yay. All those opposed, say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously. Minutes three are from the council meeting on February the 3rd, 2026. Are there any corrections? Would someone like to move? Councillor Meiszner, thank you. Seconded by Councillor Montague. Thank you very much. All those in favour, say yay. All those opposed, say nay.
Great. The motion carries unanimously. Minutes four are from the Council meeting following the Standing Committee on City Finance and Services on February the 4th, 2026. Are there any corrections to the minutes? I'd still like to move. Councillor Kerby Young, thank you. Seconded by Councillor Domenato. Thank you.
Here we go. All those in favour say aye. All those opposed say nay.
Great. The motion carries unanimously. Minutes five are from the Special Counsel Court of Revision BIA meeting on February the 5th, 2026. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Would someone like to move adoption? Councillor Dominato, seconded by Councillor Zhou. All those in favour, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Great. The motion carries unanimously. Minutes six are from the public hearing on February the 5th, 2026. Are there any corrections? Would someone like to move? Councillor Claston, seconded by Councillor Zhou. Thank you. All those in favour, say All those opposed say nay. Great. The motion carries unanimously. Matters adopted on consent. Council will now consider matters adopted on consent. Note report number four has been withdrawn. So we do have reports two, three, and five on the consent agenda for council's consideration. We will hold reports one and six to hear from speakers. Council may adopt the recommendations for reports two, three, and five on consent. Does any member wish to hold any of the items for debate or questions to team members? Okay, so moved by Councillor Kirby-Young, seconded by Councillor Montague. Sorry, he beat you to it. Now, before we consider the consent agenda, if anyone believes that they have a conflict of interest, now is the time to declare it. Does anybody wish to declare? Okay, seeing none, we have reports two, three, and five for the consent approval. Would someone like to move a document? of the recommendations before council contained in the reports. Councillor Zhou, seconded by Councillor Klassen. All those in favor say yay. All those opposed say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously. So the following have been approved on... We're good?
I was just going through the... Oops, sorry. There's a little duplicate there. But we're good, right? The following have been approved on consent. Report number two, approval of business improvement areas, BIA's renewals for 2026. Report number three, closure and sale of a portion of road adjacent to 1710 through 1730 East Pender Street. And report number five, FIFA World Cup 2026, Vancouver special use lane designation. Okay, presentations. The first one is VanStat update on roads and sidewalks. So before we begin, does anybody think that they have a conflict that they need to disclose? Seeing none, we do... have the presentation, and we do have team members here to present this item.
Your Worship, thank you very much. This presentation given by our team was part of the VanStat pilot and was initially shared with yourself, Mayor, last month. The information, I think, is really valuable as we work towards our capital budget and further briefings with Council over the course of the spring. So I wanted to provide this opportunity for all of Council to receive the information from the last VanStat pilot. I'll turn it over to the team now.
Thank you. Mayor and Council, my name is Eric Mattel. I am the Director of Streets and Engineering Services. And today I'm here to talk with you about the condition of our roads and sidewalks. So for each of roads and sidewalks, we'll start with our assets and their condition. We'll talk about trends and projections. And we'll also talk about the challenges that kind of face each of those parts of the network. We'll talk about how we choose our projects and examples of some of the coordinated projects we've completed recently.
So we'll start with roads. So from an asset management perspective, we classify our roads into three categories. The first is the major road network. So these are roads of regional significance. They are high-volume, multi-lane roads. They serve as major transit corridors or truck routes, so streets like Granville or Broadway or Hastings. And these are, in fact, the maintenance and rehab are funded entirely from TransLink. There's 121 kilometers of major road network in the city of Vancouver.
The next category is our own arterial network. So along with the major road network, the arterials form the backbone of the transportation network. So also high volume, multi-lane, and there's 239 kilometers of arterial road in the city. The last category are the local roads. So there's nearly 1,100 kilometers of local road in the city. This category is a little more varied because there are, you know, the quiet residential street that you might think of when you think of a local road, but also in this category are higher priority local roads, local street bikeways, access to hospitals, routes to school, along with industrial roads and some commercial streets as well.
So how do we assess the condition of these pavements and these roads? So every three to four years, we conduct a citywide survey of every street in the city. We do this following best practice. So we use vehicles that are equipped with sophisticated instrumentation. And we measure pavement distress, smoothness, strength. And from all of that data that we collect, we assign a score to every single block in the city. This score is a 0 to 100 score. It's called pavement condition index. And along with that, we also build a model of the roads in the city. And so with that model, we can... determine what are the best investments, what are the highest priority candidates for rehabilitation and repaving. And we also use this data to understand what different investment scenarios, what outcomes we can get from different investments.
So this graph here is a theoretical plot of pavement condition and degradation over time. So on the vertical axis you have pavement condition and on the horizontal axis you have time.
And so over the course, like the life of a road, it would start in very good condition and it would deteriorate over time. And really what this is showing is that the most cost effective way to maintain a road is to actually keep it in sort of good and very good condition and to, you know, utilize the lower cost interventions like crack sealing and thin overlays. But that allowing a road to deteriorate further into poor and very poor condition, this becomes a much more expensive thing to repair, requires more extensive reconstruction. And it's also in this zone of sort of fair and poor roads where we have to do reactive pothole patching. So we get a number of requests from council and the public inquiring about the condition of our roads and potholes and sort of this is the overall condition of the road and why we have to do so much of that.
So to give you a sense of what we talk about when we say very good and fair and very poor, these are examples. So on the left, you have a block of East Hastings that we paved last year. So this is a road in very good condition. On the right of this slide, you'll see West 10th Avenue. So this is a street that's in very poor condition. You can see the cracking and all of the surface defects. We will pave this road later this year. And in the middle, there is a block of commercial street that is in fair condition. You can start to see some of the cracking sort of longitudinally along the roadway.
So when we complete our pavement condition surveys, we can tell the overall condition across the city. And so what this map kind of tells you, and I can appreciate that there's a lot on it, is that condition really varies across the city. The major road networks of those roads that are maintained or funded by TransLink are generally in very good condition, with the exception of Broadway, which because of subway construction, we'll come back and repave that shortly after that's completed. Our own city arterials, though, about half of them are in poor and very poor condition, and the local roads are kind of a mix of poor and good and fair conditions.
The budgets that we have to work with, for the major road network, we have about $5 to $6 million, or until recently we did. TransLink has recently made a significant increase to their annual funding for the major road network rehab. For the arterial roads, we have about $3 to $4 million, $3 to $5 million annually, and that funding has stayed pretty flat over the last few capital plans. Similarly for local roads, we have $2 to $3 million. Again, that funding has been flat over the last number of capital plans. And so what that means is that for the city arterials, we can repave about 1% of the network, which would be okay if a road lasted for about 100 years, but it does not. And for local roads, it's really only a very small proportion of local roads that we can repave. And in fact, a lot of that is really just to deal with kind of emergency spot repairs that come up.
So this is a long-term trend. So this is a combination of measured data. So there's the red dashed line at 2023. To the left of that line, those are data points that we've collected through our survey. And to the right is what our pavement model tells us will happen at current investment levels. So the top line is actually TransLink's major road network. So TransLink sets a condition target of 75 PCI, and they fund to that condition. And so until recently, the average condition of the major road network in the city has been above 75 PCI, and it was only with the last survey did we see that dip. And that dip actually happened regionally, so not just in the city of Vancouver. And TransLink has responded to this data. And so their annual contribution to maintain our roads has been historically about $6 million a year. And they've increased that to $16 million a year moving forward. And so we're confident that the condition of the major road network will recover. So that's shown by the upward arrow. And that it will, you know, at least hit 75 PCI moving forward. If the city continues its trend of sort of flat funding in terms of absolute dollars for our own arterial network and the local roads, the expectation is that those roads will continue to deteriorate. And so you can kind of see where the trend line is taking us. Yeah, maybe I'll leave it there. And so to provide a bit more context, so this is a graph that shows the arterial road network. So the red line is the projected condition over time at current funding. And we added the green line, which would show the level of investment that would be required to sort of hold the average condition of the network flat. And so what that would mean is that some roads would deteriorate, others would be renewed, but that the average condition of the network would be stable. And so that would be an increase from about $5 million a year for arterial renewal to about $8 or $9 million a year.
Similarly for the local roads, our annual budget is about $2.5 million a year, and it would take about $10 million a year to hold the average condition of the network stable.
So what causes the deterioration of our roadways? I'm going to run through six kind of topics here. So these are the major drivers for roadway degradation. So we have heavy vehicles, specialty materials, peat areas, utility cuts, unimproved streets, and winter weather.
So the first one is heavy vehicles, so trucks and buses. This is the primary reason why roads deteriorate, particularly our arterial network. You just can't build a road that's going to withstand the wear and tear of these heavy vehicles, particularly starting and stopping or on heavy truck routes. And so the image on the right, this is a section of 49th Avenue where you can kind of see the effect of a bus stop where a heavy vehicle is starting and stopping repeatedly in the same location.
Specialty materials are a challenge for us. They are expensive to procure, they're expensive to install and maintain, and they require specialty skill sets and equipment.
peat areas. So peat is like a highly compressible organic soil or subsurface condition that exists in different parts of our city. And so in these areas, what you'll see is that the road is very typically in poor condition. Sidewalks are often sort of undulating and even sort of fences and houses are sometimes askew because there really just is no solid ground to build on in peat areas. And just for context, this is a map of the peat areas across the city that we're aware of. And so it's a problem that exists in a number of different neighborhoods and is, from a maintenance and renewal perspective, quite challenging.
utility cuts for development or other kind of third-party utility work. We collect fees when folks cut our roads, and they have to do that in order to service development and renew utilities. But whenever you cut a road, you introduce a new seam in a road, a new point of failure. And even those fees that we collect, they can't fully restore the road to its prior condition. So this is kind of an ongoing battle for us.
Unimproved streets. So when we say unimproved streets, we're talking about streets without curb and gutter. And so a street without curb and gutter... The curb and gutter serves a number of different purposes for drainage and other things, but it also holds the pavement structure together. And so when you don't have curb and gutter, you get separation of the asphalt much more easily, cracking in the roadway. And on streets like this, you also have typically gravel shoulders where parked vehicles are going to sort of mount and dismount the roadway. And so you get a lot more cracking and damage, which tends to allow more water in. So roads without curb and gutter tend to not last nearly as long as roads that are built with concrete curb and gutter.
And finally, winter weather. So, you know, particularly in our city where the roads are, you know, typically not in great condition, there's already entry points for water through cracking and other defects in the roadway. And the freeze-thaw cycle of water where water is expanding and contracting over and over causes damage both to the surface and below the surface, particularly in our climate where, you know, our winters tend to hover around zero degrees. And so we get number of those cycles kind of over and over. So that's a big problem for road condition.
Moving on to sidewalks. So we have about 2,200 kilometers of sidewalk in the city of Vancouver. We conducted our first detailed sidewalk condition survey in 2021.
So this was inspectors going out and measuring every defect, every tree heave, every crack. And so we now have very, very good data for the sidewalk network overall. In addition to that, we have inspectors who walk every sidewalk every year looking for trip hazards. And this is where you'll see crews come and install asphalt fillets to ensure that there are smooth transitions from panel to panel. This also protects us from lawsuits and other things.
So kind of unlike the roads, the sidewalk condition overall looks pretty good. About 10% of our sidewalks are in poor and very poor condition, but we have a lot of sidewalks. And so when you have a lot of something, even 10% represents a big backlog of repair that we have to get to. And so we have about $500 million of backlog in terms of sidewalk outstanding repairs. So if we were to try to fix everything, that's what we think it would take to do that.
Our annual funding for sidewalks, though, is about a million dollars and has been for a number of years. And so we're able to kind of do very little with this money. And in fact, you know, this represents about a 400-year backlog in terms of sidewalk repair overall. And so in practice, our sidewalk repair budget is largely used for emergency spot repairs, things like that.
And so kind of similar to roads, we have specific challenges with sidewalks. And, you know, along with peat and utility cuts and specialty materials, the primary issue that we deal with the sidewalks is tree heaves. And so, you know, over the course of time, our city developed, we planted lots of large trees adjacent to sidewalks. And those trees and root systems are now like lifting panels and creating mobility challenges for folks across the city. We continue to plant trees, but we do it in a much smarter way. We use larger soil volumes. We have correct offsets. We choose better species. And so we don't expect this problem to reoccur with the new infrastructure that we build, but we have many hundreds of thousands of trees that we have to manage adjacent to our sidewalks.
So how do we choose our projects? So we have a huge need for repair, and we have limited budget to work with. And so how do we choose? We base our determinations, obviously, on asset condition and on the outputs of our payment model, as one example that I talked about earlier. We look for projects that serve as many users as possible. We assemble the data that we get through service requests, and we input that into our decision-making process.
We look for high return on investment projects. And so what this often means is partnering with others who are doing work in the roadway.
So that might be transportation, it might be parks, utilities, whether they're internal or external, coordinating with development or working with our partners like TransLink. And we also have large internal construction crews. And so this is a unique benefit that we have that other municipalities in our region don't. And we also have our own asphalt plant. And so what this allows us to do is deliver asphalt and concrete work very affordably, relatively speaking, and manage the quality and the timing and the control over all of our projects.
When it comes to sidewalk, we look at a number of things to figure out where we would want to try to invest in sidewalks. And so separate from the full sort of $500 million backlog, if we look at where we see high pedestrian volumes, where are routes to transit, where are routes to school, where are routes to other amenities, we've mapped those things and have developed a way of choosing or prioritizing sidewalk investments where we can.
And then so finally here, I'll just run through a few examples of what these coordinated projects sort of look like. So this one here is West King Edward. So this was completed last year. So rather than just a pure utility project where we're replacing sewers and water and having a large cut in the road, we're also repaving the road. We're making transportation improvements. We're introducing green infrastructure. And so in doing that, we're able to deliver much more value with a single mobilization and, you know, a single traffic impacts and other of the usual sort of like construction overheads. And so we're able to get more value in this way.
This is an example downtown where after a number of utility cuts had taken place, rather than repairing cut by cut, we're rebuilding the entire intersection and also taking the opportunity to make other enhancements to the intersection from a design perspective.
Here's an example. This is the sidewalk on Howe Street near Canada Place. So, you know, we had heard from our partners, and we understand that this is a very important place. You know, it's a welcome mat for visitors and others, and the overall condition of the sidewalk here is very poor, and so we prioritized this as one of our kind of few large-scale sidewalk rehab projects recently.
This is an example of a bus route conversion downtown. So, you know, when we do get new bus routes in the city, that is very exciting, but it also introduces new challenges for us. Again, the weight of those vehicles, particularly on roads that are not designed for them, can be, you know, it just introduces a new... maintenance obligation for us over time and so when we can we upgrade the road to you know ensure that those changes in the network have a minimal impact overall and so this is an example where we've rebuilt the pavement structure and introduced other infrastructure at bus stops to to help with that and that was my last slide
Great. Thank you very much for the presentation and all the work. It's pretty incredible. Council, you will have up to five minutes to ask questions of our team members. Councillor Frye.
Thank you. Right off the top, one of the very first things that jumped out at me was on page 8-9, the map, which showed Pryor Street as an arterial. And, of course, Lon will remember, and many of you will remember, going back to 2019 when we committed to downgrading Pryor Street to collector. Is that just an error in the map, or is there something that we missed?
Yeah, Lon LeClaire, General Manager of Engineering Services. With our streets crews, they don't see the differentiation that transportation does. So in transportation, we have kind of a further classification, which would include collector. But for the purposes of our streets maintenance, this is... a street that carries heavy vehicles like trucks and buses. And so for that reason, we treat it as arterial in the world of road maintenance.
There are a lot of trucks and buses. That makes total sense. Thank you. Thank you. That PCI dip in 2023, do we know what precipitated that? I mean, it seems like a pretty big dip.
I think that's in part a couple of things. In part of the post-COVID time, we actually skipped a year of MRN repaving. And so working with TransLink, I think the funding outlook was uncertain. And so there was a year where that funding was not available, which is one thing. And another is that over the last sort of five years, we've seen tremendous cost escalation. And so if you look at, you know, BC Road Builders Index for road construction, like the cost of asphalt over the last five years has gone up by about 60%. Our own internal benchmarking for construction of asphalt and concrete is also up about 60% in that period. And so we're just able to accomplish less with the same funding.
Okay. Is there any new – I mean, that's very interesting. Is there any kind of new material considerations that might lessen that cost burden?
I think the short answer is no. Like, we do have our own asphalt plant, and we do have ways of keeping our own costs of asphalt down. But overall, we're seeing that the costs that we can't control are escalating quickly.
Okay. I appreciate the context to the utility cuts and trying to coordinate some of that work, I think, more broadly. And I think you said that the fees aren't really meeting the need, the actual cost of utility cuts. Is there any kind of direction maybe looking to how we can coordinate that better and, like, improve efficiency so that we're not cutting it this year and then again next year and then again the year after for different projects? Is there any thought processing around how that might work?
Yeah, there's a couple things there. We actually do a tremendous amount of coordination work to ensure that to the degree that we can, we're not cutting a road more than once. We will delay projects and accelerate others to ensure this kind of coordination. We also charge what's called a degradation fee where we can, but our ability to do this is limited. And so we can charge some third parties and we can't others for legal reasons, but the degradation fee... is meant to cover the cost not just to repair the cut, but also the impact to the life of the road overall. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, a couple more from me. The unimproved roads, is there a business case here to suggest that we might want to put curbs in on unimproved roads to better mitigate the sort of impact of gravel and busted up PCI?
The cost to install curb and gutter is very high, and so we do have some arterial roads, parts of 57th Avenue, that are unimproved, no curb and gutter. On roads like that, there might be a business case because they're high volume and the cost of continuous renewal would be higher than the long-term cost of building curb and gutter and slowing that rate of decay. But for a typical residential road where we see mostly these unimproved streets, it's hard to justify the investment.
Do we have a process whereby people could opt to pay for it themselves as the block or whatever?
We do. Practically speaking, the cost is usually too high for residents to bear, but they can pursue it through local improvement.
Totally shifting gears and putting my cyclist hat on, or should I say cyclist helmet, obviously potholes are a big deal, an even bigger deal if you're on a bicycle. And do we prioritize pothole and PCI repairs on active transportation routes specifically?
We have three to four crews that proactively look for potholes across the city, and we also have our other construction crews sort of self-report. So we repair about 25,000 potholes a year. Only, you know, 3,000 or 4,000 of those come in through 311. The rest are found by our own crews. And we understand the sort of relative priority of different parts of the network, for sure. I'm sure Councillor Maloney will pick up this thread.
Councillor Meiszner? Yeah, thanks. I'm happy to hear the rest of that answer on potholes.
Oh, sure. Yeah. I was just going to say that we understand that some roads are kind of more important than others. And so relatively speaking, yes, we prioritize.
Okay, great. Thanks. Councillor Fry asked a few of my questions, but I had a couple more as well. You talked about the major road network being funded by TransLink in terms of repairs. What about bus routes that are not on major roads? So there's some streets downtown that I presume are not major roads, like Robson Street, for example. Do we receive any funding from TransLink for repairs to those roads?
We don't. And so there's an ongoing conversation between the city and TransLink about... which roads and routes qualify for inclusion in the major road network. It's not a static network, and we do occasionally add parts of the network into the major road category. But for roads that are not, something like 49th Avenue, which is a very busy bus route, the renewal and maintenance of that roadway is currently entirely in the city.
Okay, and the process of adding roads to that major road network, what does that look like? Does that require council direction? Is that staff at the city in discussion with staff at TransLink? Is it a provincial thing? Can you give me an idea of what that looks like?
Yeah, on a somewhat regular basis, TransLink will look at the major rope network for adjustments. This could be deletions or it could be additions. The interest in that is very high for the same reasons it is in Vancouver, because we have a lot of arterial streets that carry buses that are not on the MRN. A lot of cities are experiencing that as well. So the competition for those extra MRN miles or kilometers is high. And of course, the funding available at TransLink is limited. So they're facing a similar situation.
okay thank you for that information related to that I've been noticing around town the concrete bus pads being installed who decides where those go how are they funded and are we looking to put those at bus stops all over the city
To the degree that we can, we would like to build those wherever a bus stops because it is disproportionate wear and tear where a heavy vehicle is starting and stopping in a predictable location. So we work with TransLink and our transportation partners to site those bus pads. And we do get cost sharing, I think, on bus pads. Yes, we do, from TransLink and Coast Mountain.
Okay. Is it like a 50-50, or what does that look like? And how much does a pad like that cost, out of curiosity?
It'd be like a rough estimate. Good morning, Ross McFarland, Streets Capital Program Manager. So on the topic of bus pads, TransLink does provide some cost share funding for kind of installing new bus pads as bespoke projects, but also in the course of us doing our larger arterial or MRN paving projects, we also look for opportunities where we can install those bus pads at the same time.
Okay, and do you have an idea of what they cost? Are they super expensive or...
It's okay.
I'd have to go back and check with our PM team of some of the recent costs for the ones we've been installing.
Okay, that's okay.
I think Councillor Fry was kind of asking a question around this, but I wasn't quite clear. Around the fees of restoring the road to... It's prior condition that we're collecting. How can we collect sufficient enough fees to do that? Is it something that needs to come from council? What does that look like? Because I notice a lot of road cuts just over and over again, and it really can't
so we've made a lot of progress on this in the last few years actually with council's support so for a time we had a very long a very large backlog of unrepaired cuts in roads and sidewalks over the last few years through the fee report we've increased the fees of those repairs And that's enabled us to kind of action more. The issue that we had was that fees that we had collected over the last five and ten and even longer years were no longer sufficient to repair those specific cuts. And so now we've taken a blended services model where our own internal crews plus contractors are... trying to quickly get on top of those cuts as we take the money so that inflation and cost escalation doesn't kind of run away from us. And so this is an area of focus for us and has been for the last couple of years.
Okay. I do remember that recently in one of your presentations. So, yeah, I look forward to seeing the work of that new structure. Totally. Yeah. Thanks. That's it for me.
Thank you very much. Councillor Zhou. Yeah, thanks, Mayor. So thanks for the presentation and all the work behind the scenes. Really important to our residents. So my question is, we know the budget is always a concern, constraint. So I heard from the residents that they want to donate to, not through the local improvement project, but to donate to the city to do those kind of repair for the
road major road is there any channel allow them to do that I don't have a great answer for that question right now but I'd be happy to take it away consult with our colleagues in sort of law and finance and get back to you okay and also like do we have a double road program here sorry say again
adopt a road program. So I think other municipalities, they do that, right? You can adopt a local road.
Oh, I see. So we typically don't ask residents directly to pay for maintenance of roadways, and so we don't have an adopt-a-road program like we would for, say, a catch basin.
Okay, so would that be something we could consider using some creative way to raise the money from the residents who want to contribute?
Yeah, I think we'd be happy to look at other programs and, you know, come back to council with a recommendation on that.
Okay, thanks. And also for the sidewalk repair, do we also access the accessibility? Like, for instance, some wheelchair worker, and we'll repair some of the ramp. And what are the, you know, the project right now?
Yeah, we prioritize ramps that have been requested by residents. And so over the last sort of capital plan, council helped to increase the funding that was available to do that work. And so the current program is if a resident were to request a curb ramp where one currently doesn't exist, we typically can build that ramp in the following construction season. So sometimes that work can happen very quickly. Other times it may take... the better part of a year if it were, say, you know, in the winter where that request came in. But for the most part, we're able to be responsive to requests. That being said, there are still about 2,200 curb ramps in the sidewalk network that are missing.
Okay, and do we prioritize to the area that will have more seniors residents living?
I would say that we do in an indirect way because we respond to the specific requests from those with mobility issues.
Okay, how about the back lane marks on the ground? Sometimes it's not very clear, and do we repaint that every year?
If you're referring to shark's teeth on what we call the white triangle, we don't typically repaint those on speed humps, and that's, I think, purely a budgetary consideration.
Okay, and we only do that based on requests from the residents.
The initial installation of a speed hump includes the marking. We typically don't replace them. I think the belief is that residents typically get accustomed to the location of those humps and kind of rely on them less after the initial installation. Okay, thanks.
The other question is about the road condition assessment program. I just want to make sure the laneway condition is never accessed.
We also assess the condition of laneways, yes.
Okay, but we never, anything, just leave that to the local improvement project, right?
Not entirely. So the first paving of a lane is typically done through local improvement. And what we would do is proactively pave or repave a lane if the cost of maintenance is otherwise high. Like if the long-term cost of maintaining, say, a gravel or unimproved lane would be higher than to repave, we would repave, but otherwise we don't.
Thank you. Other questions, I heard that, you know, we have more EV on the road right now, and EV is much heavier than the regular vehicles. What are the damage to the road condition, like for EV, and are there any mitigation strategy to actually increase the EVs on the road?
So we haven't studied the effect of the weight change of passenger vehicles in terms of EVs, and we can do that. My expectation is that that wouldn't be a concern. considerable change because I think they still don't approach the sort of weight of the buses and trucks that are the more challenging vehicles to design for.
Okay, thanks. That's all my question. Thanks. Great. Thank you very much. So I do want to thank all of our team members for the incredibly hard work they've done and all the detail that you've provided today, but also leading up to this moment here. And so based on the presentation today and the earlier work that you've done, I'd like to move a motion in response to your work. So, Clerk, do you have to go to – I don't have to go to the amendment queue, do I? I just made a queue.
Great, thank you. Okay, so my motion moves, therefore, it be resolved that council direct staff to include in the 2027 through 2031 capital plan funding at the maximum delivery capacity scenario identified in the weekly council Q&A in the approximate amount of $104 million over the next four years. to restore the city's arterial road, local road, and sidewalk networks towards a state of good repair, representing a significant increase from the $34 million allocated in the 2023-2026 capital plan for renewal of these assets. And further, that staff report back with proposed performance targets for arterial roads, local roads, and sidewalks, including lifecycle cost analysis and backlog reduction metrics, outlining how this investment will improve overall network condition and support sustained asset performance beyond 2031. So this is exactly what we started VanStat for, to identify the gaps in our city quickly and address them effectively. This council is committed to listening to Vancouverites and going back to basics. to funding our road and sidewalk repairs to the level that they need to be at. And so I do hope that my colleagues support this motion. So seconded by Councillor Kerr-Young. Sorry, I saw her first. Thank you very much.
Councillor Maloney.
Could I have a two-minute recess to draft a minor modification and amendment to the amendment, please? Otherwise, I could go after Councillor Dominato.
If you can go after Councillor Dominato, because I'm sure Councillor Dominato will have more than two minutes. Councillor Dominato.
Thank you. Given the run amendment, through you, a point of information to staff. I actually was wanting to ask a couple of questions around the presentation this morning, and particularly a couple of my questions were asked, a number of them were asked by my colleagues, but I'm interested in the context of what you delivered as a presentation around the road network and sidewalks. If you could speak to the issue of liability and legal liability around risks around tripping, hazards on sidewalks, cyclists hitting cracks or holes in potholes and streets. Could you comment on that and what we see typically annually in terms of liability concerns?
I don't know if we have anyone from legal here for that or if Lon wants to talk. I'll turn over to you.
I have a partial answer, and then maybe Lon can fill in some of the blanks. So we have a trip hazard program specifically for sidewalks, and part of the reason for that is to ensure that we will provide safe sidewalks for all of the folks who use them, but also to ensure that we're meeting our legal obligations as it comes to care and maintenance and the management of trip hazard. In that program, you know, we walk every single sidewalk every single year and we, you know, use our program of asphalt filleting to ensure that we don't have trip hazards to the degree that we can manage them reasonably. And that's typically what we point to when there is a trip and fall claim as the city's sort of due diligence. So similarly for road and sidewalk network or the road networks overall, I think the test is really are we doing everything that we reasonably can to manage our roads and like whether they're a local road or an arterial road. But maybe Lon has more to say about that.
I appreciate that. So what I'm hearing is the importance of the work is to mitigate and prevent ultimately claims. But would it be fair to say that the city has had claims? And so that may be, again, it reinforces the importance of, I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'm just asking if you can comment on that.
It would be fair to say that we get claims, yes.
Okay. I'll stop there because this is my time for commenting and debate as well. So thank you.
Yeah, just wanted to say strongly in support of this amendment. In the presentation, we saw that with the predicted PCI and the current budgets that we have, that the average condition of our roads, particularly the arterial and local road network, would continue to decline. So I'm looking at the chart right now that we just saw a few minutes ago. It's quite a substantial decline. And as we all know, Vancouverites rely on safe sidewalks and roads that are in a good state of repair. and we heard that TransLink has increased their funding for the major road network, and I really believe that it's time that the city does the same. When I heard that we only have been allocating something like $2 million, I can't remember if that was for local roads or sidewalks, that was just kind of stunned by that low number, and I think this is a worthwhile investment, and it's long overdue, so I'm in strong support of this amendment from the mayor. Thanks. Thank you very much. Councillor Kirby Young.
Yeah, thanks. I was also on the queue to ask some questions, so I'm going to try to be quick then with the time. Can I question through you, Chair, to staff if I can, and try to fire these quickly because I also want to make comments. With respects to the Translake major road network funding that went from $6 to $16 million, do we also have cause for concern about risk to that with the recent provincial budget as well as the federal budget for any capital? projects. I know TransLink has tried to retain that because they know it's very valued by local municipalities the last few years, but they are also facing pretty significant financial pressures, so we should also be concerned about that funding, should we not?
My understanding is that for 2026 and 2027, the funding has been included as part of their financial plan, but that moving forward, I think it's sort of yet to be approved. And so there is some risk to funding at that level beyond those years.
And it does have to be reapproved annually, and that was in advance of the provincial budget. They did not see the support that they had hoped for. Is that correct?
I don't believe it's approved annually. Is it?
I believe it is.
But periodically, yeah, as part of the overall plan.
Okay. I'm pretty sure it's annual, having attended Mayor's Council for Mayor Sim. My other question was just around the cost for curb cuts and gutters are very expensive. Why is that, you mentioned?
In order to add curb and gutter to a road, like an unimproved road, you typically would have to excavate a significant amount of the roadway itself in order to kind of like refit the road. And so there's the cost of like the subsurface preparation and then the concrete work itself. And so concrete work is just generally expensive.
Okay. Thanks. I appreciate that. And then speaking to the amendment on the floor, I will say that it's sobering when you look at the stats with 40% of our road network in extremely poor or very poor condition. It's concerning. We hear about it all the time. It has a safety impact, obviously. It has legal liability. perspective, which Councillor Domonato pointed out and I was going to ask about that as well. But it also, I think, makes residents feel like the city is deteriorating. I think that this is a, quite frankly, this budget has been starved over the past couple of capital plans. And I think that this is reflective of a bigger trend of our aging infrastructure and the fact that the city of Vancouver has spent funding on a number of other priorities, filling gaps that were outside our jurisdiction and, quite frankly, our own suffered. And this is, I think, really about acknowledging that and riding the ship. When you leave them over time, they decay faster. They cost more to fix. And it's shocking, actually, when you look at the fact that 40% in a city like Vancouver's is in poor condition. And we would be in far worse shape if we didn't have the TransLink funding for the major road network. So this is pretty pivotal in terms of the fundamental basic things that we are required to do before we even get to the things that add to quality of life and fun in Vancouver, which also where we have gaps, and I think we need to address whether it's the infrastructure, community centers, and so forth. So I don't think that there should be a debate around this. I think that this is necessary. It's at sort of a significant crisis level, and I think council does need to take action on it. So I'm very happy to second and support the proposed direction. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. I was waiting. I thought there was an amendment coming, but maybe it's not. I'll just comment if it isn't. I'm going to make my comments now on the motion as presented. I would concur with my colleagues that this is, given the information we've received today, while we do have some roads and we have sidewalks that are in good condition on Balancers, others that are not. And I would say... As we're looking to prioritize capital infrastructure in the city, while this isn't really sexy, and I appreciate the presentation that made it way more interesting this morning, it is pretty fundamental. And I consistently hear from residents about concerns about safety and accessibility of our sidewalks. And I consistently hear from cyclists about the conditions of the road and concerns of falls and safety concerns there as well. And so while this isn't exciting like opening a new community center or facilities like that, it is the real basics that we need to provide for and manage and really is in the direct purview of the city. But I really think if you step it back, it's not about asphalt. It's not about concrete. It's not about materials. It's not about roadways. It's really about ensuring that residents, whether they're walking, they're in a mobility device, they're driving, they're cycling, that they're safe. And also it's preventative as well, this effort. So happy to support the motion.
Thanks very much. I just have a point of information through you, Chair, to the staff. And I'm looking at the further that my question is, as part of the report back, would that include also a work plan in terms of our capacity to deliver? Because, you know, I think from a staffing perspective, you know, we've often... invested in capital infrastructure, but not necessarily had the complement of staff required in order to meet that accelerated demand. And I think of curb cuts and things like that, where we've actually, as a council, sort of wrestled with hiring external contractors to do that work. Would that be part of the report back?
Yeah. Yeah, happy to include that as part of the report back. I think it's really important that we are able to deliver on the funding that's available. And so we would, you know, leverage all of our tools, internal crews, external contracting. And yeah, that's a reasonable thing to include. We'd be happy to do that.
Great. And then further to that, would it also include where that money's coming from? Meaning... if it's dollars that would be otherwise allocated to a community center upgrade or upgrading the Vancouver Aquatic Center or a kid's pool or something like that, that we can clearly identify where that funding is coming from because $70 million is not something I think we have sitting on the sidelines waiting to be allocated.
Good morning, Mayor, Council, Sandra Singh, Deputy City Manager. The way we interpret this motion is this is a direction, if passed, this would be a direction from Council to include this amount in the draft capital plan. That plan will include trade-offs across a wide variety of city services, and we'll bring that to Council for consideration, and it will ultimately be your decision how to allocate it across the many city assets.
Yeah, this is not my first capital plan, so I just want to clarify that in the report back that it'll be very clear where this particular motions funding is coming from versus general trade-offs.
In the capital plan, our finance colleagues typically do indicate what the funding source is for the variety of assets, whether it's DCLs or CACs or tax-funded or government contributions.
I understand all that. So what I'm looking for is that a reallocation from what was planned to what would be delivered through this amendment. Because this is a specific ask. I think we're on the same page with where that's coming from. That'll be a question that comes up in the future. And then I just had a question around staff's interpretation of... Well, actually, I'll leave that just for my closing comments, which I'll just make now, which is to say I'm happy to support this. I think that we have underfunded what's required in terms of capital infrastructure, renewal and upgrades in terms of meeting the demand. But we've done that across the board. and focused on when I think about our next capital plan funding is how we can leverage the work we're doing intergovernmentally with other levels of government to make sure that we are maximizing our ability to access infrastructure funding that was allocated actually in the federal budget. $51 billion. And I just feel like we haven't been clear enough about what funding are we going after? What are we getting? What are we not getting? And particularly around the $17 billion that is matching funds with the province. I mean, so much of what we have to upgrade and balance in terms of development is around TODs and TOAs, which is provincially sort of, you know, provincial expectations, if you will, on a city to build more housing. And that costs us in terms of being able to pay for the roads and the sewers and all the things we need to deliver on that housing. I just hope that we push a little harder to be able to show our work and show where we're able to connect the dots with funding that we can get from the province, funding that we can get from the federal government, so that this isn't just taking away from other... underfunded projects that need infrastructure. And I just don't see us doing enough to get that funding in our city. We're a big city. We're on the map with the federal government. We need to be able to push that forward and make a case to get investment in our city. So that's what I'll be looking for. I'm supporting this with the caveat that we need to be able to show our work in terms of going outside of Vancouver taxpayers to fund these projects.
Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate any extra funding that goes to this cause and so I'm very supportive. I just wanted to, there were some questions that I was going to explore. One of the concerns that I have is that we've got city policies that prioritise, there's a hierarchy of transport modes that are prioritised in a particular order for a particular reason. This is a very motor vehicle traffic-focused motion, and while that is very important, we also... What I want to do is make sure that we find out what funding is required to do things like ensure the maintenance of the active transport network, the replacement of curb cuts, some of which... aren't best practice. They point wheelchair users out into the centre of the intersection instead of directly across to the opposite sidewalk curb cut. There are some... In terms of the actual dollar funding that's in the amendment... That is focused on the motor vehicle traffic rather than what I want to make sure that we're considering how much money is needed to make sure that we maximise accessibility and giving a more equitable funding allocation to transit, active transport. walking, those are things that we actually prioritize in existing city policy. So I would very much welcome this amendment to the amendment being seconded and supported.
Thank you.
Okay. I'm going to move to the amendment queue here, just as a matter of procedure.
I was hoping that that time I just spent would be on the amendment queue, actually, if it could be transferred, because I do have a whole bunch of questions that I...
Awesome. Councillor Zhou? Yeah, I just want to quickly ask... Do you have a seconder? Great. Councillor Orr, thank you. Councillor Zhou?
Yeah, thanks. Just want to ask a point of information through you, Chair, to the staff.
So just wondering, the transit route, that's funded by the TransLink, right? Not by the city?
It's a combination. So it's the major road network where there are some very significant transit activities that's funded by TransLink, but there are a number of bus routes and transit routes in the city that are on the city arterials that are funded by the city.
Okay, thanks. That's all my question.
Yeah, I'm supportive of the Mayor's amendment, and I think this actually amendment to the amendment from Councillor Maloney supports a lot of the unstated goals in our transportation planning and active transportation and accessibility and equity, so I think that this is also an important amendment to that amendment, and I'm happy to support it. Thank you very much.
If you could please go to the voting panel.
And the amendment fails with myself, Councillors Kirby Young, Don Minato, Montague, Klaassen, Meisner, and Joe in opposition. Okay, so we'll go back to the main queue. Councillor Maloney.
Thank you. This is a question, I think, for the director of, I'm sorry, the head of engineering. Could you just explain, so painting of car roads is budgeted, but painting of cycling and pedestrians?
infrastructure is only when requested. Could you just explain what the situation is there?
In terms of road markings, we do annual lane markings. Those include whether it's a painted bike lane or a painted delineation between lanes. Those are done annually. When we look at road markings, which might be the thermoplast, you know, for a bike stencil or something like that, that's something that we would do on request. Generally, they have a longer lifespan, so these would be thermoplastic crosswalks and things like that. Those are on request.
And how much extra would it cost to include automatic renewal of those markings instead of having them on request?
We did provide a memo to council last year specific to that question. So we can reissue that memo. It does tell you exactly what would be required for a regular maintenance program for all road markings.
And also, is there any work being done to influence the navigation apps to prevent rat running on streets that are more prone to damage?
We have been working quite well. We try. I mean, we don't have control over Google Maps and things like that. It's actually been an issue more recently with the amount of construction disruption that we've been experiencing in the last little while, in particular with the closure of Broadway. So we've seen people being rooted onto streets like local streets and lanes and creating a lot more traffic there. And so we have our own measures that we can bring in, like a left turn ban or a closure, a temporary closure, which we'll undo when the construction work is complete. But we've also been reaching out to those map apps to try to get them to not use lanes and things like that with some success.
Do you know which level of government would have the ability to regulate those kind of apps to require it?
I don't know, quite honestly. I mean, with the map providers that are through apps, the best we can do is have that conversation. And as soon as we bring in a measure which results in a closure, their app updates automatically because it often is very responsive to where vehicles already are.
Thank you very much. Okay. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'm going to call the motion to vote. to the voting panel great and that passes unanimously and that completes presentation number one thank you everyone thank you for your hard work So we're going to go on to the reports now. The first report we have is number one, 2STGD plus safety and inclusion action renewal. Before we begin this agenda item, if anyone believes that they have a conflict of interest, now is the time to declare it. Seeing no one declaring, this item does have a presentation and we do have our team members to present this item.
GOOD MORNING, MAYOR AND COUNCIL, MARGARET WHITKINS, GENERAL MANAGER, ARTS, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY SERVICES. TODAY WE ARE PLEASED TO BE HERE TO PRESENT YOU WITH AN OVERVIEW OF THE UPDATE TO THE 2 STGD PLUS SAFETY AND INCLUSION ACTION PLAN. THIS WORK IS THE RESULT OF A MOTION PUT FORWARD BY COUNCIL IN NOVEMBER OF 2023. Staff have worked across departments, as well as with other municipal departments, such as VPL and Park Board, to bring forward a proposal outlining pragmatic actions that can be undertaken in 2026 and with a plan to report back to Council on progress annually. I will now hand the presentation over to April Freytag-Sumter and Sonia Bianchi from Social Policy and Projects to walk you through the report.
Thank you.
Good morning, Marin Council. I'm pleased to be here to present on the 2S TGD Plus Safety and Inclusion Action Plan. My name is April Sumter-Frytag. I go by both April and Sumter. I use she, her, and they, their pronouns. And I work on the Community and Gender Safety Team in ACCS. Social Policy and Projects, where my focus is sex workers' safety and inclusion, gender equity centered around the City of Reconciliation framework. And I am the project lead for the renewal of the 2S TGD Plus Safety and Inclusion Action Plan. I would like to thank community members for their generosity in sharing their expertise and lived experience, and honor two STGD Plus community members who are no longer with us, whose advocacy laid the foundation for this work, and whose voices with communities are reflected throughout this plan. I also want to acknowledge the Cross-Departmental Working Group whose collaboration was essential, and the work I am presenting today is a team effort. On this slide, you will see the image. And it's the visual image that we used during our internal and external engagement. And each element carries a significance. You'll see the colors of the trans flag. You'll see feathers appearing as a watermark to honor and uplift Two-Spirit inclusion, the hands representing the diversity of two STGD plus communities, and the hearts symbolizing care, the care we carried throughout this process with community and lived experience staff. and signaling the city's commitment to caring about the safety and inclusion of two STGD plus communities.
Next slide. Thank you. I'm also just going to acknowledge and thank Sonia, who is doing our slide deck for me. And note that I am visually impaired. I cannot see the slides above here. I'm referring to copies here. My range of vision, I can see Councillor Maloney, almost councillors though. And I don't have peripheral vision. So if I need a cue, I might need a visual cue or you might see me just actually really turning around to see what's going on. Great. All right. So the council member motion from November 23 was to renew the 2STGD Plus action plan focused on safety and inclusion, to engage with partners, advisory committees, community leaders, and organization, and to ensure plans, resources, and engagements were available in multiple languages. The plan is connected to the council city strategic priorities through Vibrant Vancouver, through the objectives of number one, a vibrant and diverse community, number two, housing, number five, safety and security, number seven, being healthy and inclusive and equitable, and number eight, work on reconciliation. The equity framework is also involved in our process, and that's an internal process about getting our house in order as we work on equity issues, and you'll see this through our plan, through our goal HR and staff experiences. The city of reconciliation framework has part of the work that we've done. We've had a focus on urban Indigenous engagement, and we're connected to the work on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, commitment to work with diverse Indigenous communities. We're also connected to the healthy city strategy that you saw in council fairly recently, and I'll be talking about that a little bit later in the presentation. Next slide. We're going to talk a bit about the background. So you'll see, oh, excellent. The timeline here is in 2016, the city working with community and partners developed the original 2016 action plan. In 2023, there was the council member motion to renew. In 2024, we formed internal working group, conducted initial engagement. In 2024, staff reported back with an update memo to council. And 2025 to present, I'll be talking about in the rest of the presentation, but there has been significant work from the 2016 plan that you can see in the memo that we received, we delivered to council in December of 2024.
There's also a note on the acronym. You'll see that there are various names that we have used for this plan and strategy over the years, and based on community feedback and evolving language since 2016, the acronym TGV2S and other variations have been updated to 2STGD+, to refer to two-spirit, transgender, and gender-diverse plus communities. As community members have unique relationships with different terms, the plus is a way to be inclusive and to support self-determination. In this report, the term 2STGD plus will be used, and one of the early initiatives of the action plan is to work to create consistency and alignment of terminology in all of City of Vancouver initiatives. Next slide. Thank you.
I'm going to talk a little bit about why this work matters. You'll see some statistics up on the slide there. And we're just noting that there's been a considerable rise in hate crimes. There's disproportionate levels of poverty, barriers to employment. And these are reflecting national statistics that have been reinforced by what we saw in our engagement data as communities spoke to incidents of violence and harassment, experiencing economic inequity, and lack of access to housing. In July 2016, Bill 27 amended the BC Human Rights Code to include gender identity or expression among protective grounds, making discrimination on this basis illegal. Unfortunately, as we did this work, there were some transphobic comments when we did our online engagements. And as we have seen, there are recent legislative shifts in other jurisdictions and internationally where some established protections for two STGD plus individuals have been challenged. This emphasizes the importance of doing this work in the current environment. Next slide. Thank you. I'm going to talk a bit about the process for the action plan and the internal engagement. Between 2024 and 2025, the project engaged more than 800 community members through public advisory committee sessions, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, surveys, outreach activities, and an in-person report-back event. The TGD2S Roundtable brought us insights from housing and service providers and lived experience community consultants, facilitators, and we had the support of a Two-Spirit elder. We translated material to support language accessibility and participation across diverse communities. These included multilingual materials available in five languages. We offered hard copy survey options at in-person events and outreach tables to ensure participation for those with barriers to digital access.
The project applied a relationship-focused engagement model focusing on intentional ways of connecting with community with care given to confidentiality, accessibility needs, cultural safety, and community dynamics. Community members had roles as connectors and supported hosting outreach events, facilitating groups, and shared survey and engagement opportunities. Even with the success of this engagement, we don't feel we've reached everyone in the 2STGD Plus community, so there's still more room to build community connections. Our internal process included a jurisdictional scan of best practices, where I would have to say that Vancouver did show up as a global leader in this work. The project team had staff connectors who worked on developing action within goals areas. We connected with the two STGD Plus related employee resource groups from the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Public Library. And we had a really great partnership with Parks. Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation staff invited us to join community-centered events, including activities for Trans Day Remembrance and All Ages Post-Swim Ice Cream Social, and they helped promote our action plan activities and extend community outreach.
We also had sessions with the City of Vancouver Public Advisory Committees, where we connected with liaisons from our city partners, the Vancouver Police Department, the Board of Parks and Recreation, Vancouver School Board, and they shared their agency's connections to this work, confirmed the synergy of our goal areas and the importance of future collaborations. Overall, the process was designed to confirm goal areas and get insights within those goals what actions would be meaningful and impactful. Next slide.
I'm going to share some findings from our community engagement. As the focus of this plan is safety and inclusion, one of the key questions we asked were, do people feel safe and do they feel included? As we found, people felt they often felt safe here in the city, although there was a small group of people who said never, which is not a really good indicator, and that generally they did not feel included. So we definitely have some work to do in these areas. Other feedback involved issues and challenges related to transphobia, racism, disability, mental health services, gender-based violences, and challenges related to systemic discrimination. We have not released all of these survey findings and results, and we look forward to sharing more details from our engagement summary and project research in a What We Heard report as part of the future process. For now, I'll share a couple of quotes from survey participants.
It's not so much about making a bunch of trans-specific services. It's about making sure the services that can be assessed by 99% of the society doesn't exclude trans people who need those services as well. And from another participant, they wrote to us, I am the parent of a transgender child, and we moved to Vancouver specifically because of the inclusion and openness in the city. I am proud of you for doing this and even for asking the questions.
Next slide. I'm now actually going to talk about the 2STGD safety and inclusion action plan and the framework.
So this is the framework which was informed by our community engagement findings and outlines our vision, mission, and goal areas. Our vision is to advance equity so that everyone feels safe, represented and included. And our mission is that the city of Vancouver reaffirms its commitment to the well-being of two-spirit transgender and gender diverse plus residents and staff and addresses systemic barriers. And we'll fall into the five goal areas that I'll talk about on the next slide.
as some people might see, our goal areas fall into housing and homelessness, community spaces and safety, programs and services, visibility and engagement, and human resources and staff experiences. And through those, we have the objectives to improve housing and shelter options. create and improve public spaces welcoming to 2S TGD Plus individuals, to develop, expand, and support programs that cater to the diverse needs, to enhance visibility and better engage folks in city consultations, and to foster an inclusive and supportive work environment.
Through these actions and objectives, it's going to be very important that we work with partners. The plan itself is focused on the actions within the city's jurisdiction, but collaboration will be essential as community and staff identified actions that included issues beyond the city's authority and would need to incorporate building on existing relationships with partners of all level of government. The city will need to work along the province and federal and municipal partners to address issues beyond its jurisdiction, such as health care, education, policing, employment standards, and housing. And we can do that work by sharing evidence that we have found through this and other engagements and supporting community-led efforts.
The next slide is going to talk about our relation to the Healthy City Strategy and the goal areas as established in the 2STGD framework align with the Healthy City Strategy using the shared lenses of equity inclusion, reconciliation, accessibility, as well as synergy with the 12... GOAL AREAS IN THE HEALTHY CITY STRATEGIES THAT REINFORCE THE PRIORITIES OF OUR ACTION PLAN AND CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR INCLUSIVE DATA COLLECTION, MONITORING AND DECISION MAKING. IF YOU'RE LOOKING AT THE CHART, YOU CAN SEE THAT OUR GOAL AREAS ARE ON THE LEFT SIDE AND YOU CAN SEE HOW THEY CONNECT TO THE 12 GOAL AREAS AND THE LENSES WITH THE HEALTHY CITY STRATEGY.
NEXT SLIDE.
So there are a total of 30 actions over the five goal areas, and there's a full list of these in Appendix B, and I'm just going to do some highlights from each area. In housing, we're looking to update non-market housing operation applications, identify supports for chosen family compositions, and include TUSTGD plus welcoming language and gender identification options. Through our work, we are in community spaces and space safety. We want to integrate two STGD Plus inclusion principles into the design of city-owned washrooms and change room facilities, guided by best practice standards and community feedback. In programs and services, we want to assess opportunities to expand targeted supports for organizations, artists, art spaces, and cultural production.
In visibility and engagement, we want to update the City of Vancouver's communication with inclusive language and include resources for 2STGD plus communities on Vancouver City websites. And in how HR and staff experience, we want to extend awareness by continuing to deliver existing gender diversity awareness courses.
In summary, the 2STG Plus action plan works to advance safety, inclusion, and access for residents and staff by strengthening housing, services, public spaces, visibility, and workplace supports. The plan covers 2026 to early 2027 actions. As I mentioned, the 30 actions that are citywide. All actions have been framed to consider resources, impact, feasibility, city jurisdiction, and measurable outcomes. PLANS INCLUDE AN ANNUAL EVALUATION AND UPDATE REPORT, AND ACTIONS FOR 2027 AND BEYOND ARE UNDER DEVELOPMENT AS PART OF FUTURE PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS. NEXT SLIDE.
There is a next slide. And I just want to thank you for your time and attention today. I appreciate the opportunity to share the overview of this work with you. Our ongoing efforts are deeply important to inclusion and safety across the city and look forward to hearing Council's feedback on the action plan and recommendations. Thank you.
Great. Thank you very much for the presentation. Council, you have up to five minutes to ask questions of team members. Are there any questions? Councillor Maloney.
Yeah, thank you so much for your presentation. I'm interested to know how we could fast track the measures to go further on housing for trans youth particularly. When are we likely to see... the actions taken in the report, is it 2027 or later? I'm interested in hearing about implementing the action plan to get more appropriate plentiful housing for especially young people that need it.
Thank you for the question.
So certainly 2026, as outlined in Appendix B, those are the actions that we're prioritising this year. A lot of the housing-related action items are related to advocacy, depending on partner conversations to move forward bigger projects such as that. So we don't have a specific answer for you, but that's certainly the priority to start that work in this year.
And are there any short-term measures we could be taking to meet the immediate need?
Hi, good morning. Brooke Malice, Director of Homelessness Services. Thank you for the question. Certainly, efforts such as access to shelter and outreach services as a gateway towards housing are opportunities that the City of Vancouver can participate in and have been. So, for example, Aoki Ross House is a city-owned site specifically for individuals from this community. And certainly there could be more. It's been a very successful site. Additionally, the tiny shelters pilot project that the city of Vancouver approved also has been a good source of accessing safe shelter for individuals from TGD2S plus communities.
And I understand that when there are budget cuts at any level of government, it's one of the first things that can be cut back on is coordination resources to connect people who need help with the services that are available. What's your feeling on the status of the coordination services reaching the people that need it?
I mean, certainly we do our best to work with our partners, both in the nonprofit sector as well as BC Housing, who has oversight jurisdiction for the shelters and the guidelines related to ensuring safe access to all individuals within the sheltering system.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Okay, so we're now going to hear from registered speakers for this report. Public speakers should state whether they are in support or opposition of the recommendations and may only speak once. I'll also ask speakers if they are residents of Vancouver, if it's not noted on the speakers list. So the first public speaker we have is Kelly N. I hope I pronounced your name correctly.
Okay. So that is the end of our speakers list. And I'm assuming that was in the chamber. Okay. Would someone like to move a motion? Councillor Dominato. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor Meiszner. Councillor, is there any discussion? Councillor Kirby Young.
Thanks. I just wanted to acknowledge and appreciate staff for the work. I think when I was first elected to the Vancouver Park Board, the very first event, public event of any type that I attended, was the opening of the city's first universal washrooms at Hillcrest Community Centre, if I remember correctly. And so that was some time back, and I think sort of speaks to the city's being attuned I can put it that way to ensuring that people really feel welcome I think that the partnership with the Vancouver Public Library with the park board etc are really particularly important in this work because those are a lot of the public and community serving spaces where a lot of services are accessed and I know there's other strategies that are also noted in the report I think that it's particularly poignant for this work to come forward now um and i'm choosing my words very cautiously and um sort of respectfully in saying this but i think coming off of the um tragic, tragic events in Tumbler Ridge. Whenever you have a situation like that, the first thing that I worry about is seeing increased division and fear and hate in communities. And I think that was a horrific event that will leave an indelible impact on that community and our province. But I do think that when you have events like that, it is particularly important to not... foster in any way intentionally or unintentionally any states of division and to continue to lead to do the best that we can to ensure we have a very diverse and welcoming city here. And so I just felt compelled to provide that comment and thank people for the work because I suspect that there are a lot of other jurisdictions that might be sadly seeing other reactions in terms of where we are at. And I think it's really important that we continue to sort of stand on these principles and that our city is just very simply open and welcoming to everybody so i'll be brief and i'll leave it there but i just want to say thank you for the work very much counselor
Thanks so much for that. And I also want to echo Councillor Kirby-Young. That was very well said. There's a lot of division and a lot of fear, especially on social media. And it's important to be united on that. And I really appreciate you saying that. And it's really good to see some of these numbers. Obviously, 75% feel safe. Obviously, noting that we can do better, especially around inclusion. But I really love that quote around, it's not about... making a bunch of, uh, trans specific services, but more, uh, making sure that the services can be accessed by 90, 99% of society that doesn't include trans people. Um, so, um, I really liked that kind of approach for sure. And just noting that, um, you know, in the briefing, we, you know, we asked some sort of questions, some questions around, you know, like, um, sex work funding, you know, a lot, um, uh, there's a lot of organizations sort of struggling and as well as, you know, um, uh, sort of promoting the idea that we need more deeper affordability for the housing component in terms of shelter rate. Trans people are often overrepresented. And so, yeah, just again, I wanted to thank you for the work. Thank you very much. Councillor Bligh.
Yeah, echoing some of the comments from my colleagues, thanking staff for the work on this action plan. And I think it's... It is important. It's important work. I think that what people don't necessarily... It really comes down to lived experience, and there are people in our city that do not feel safe. Two-spirit trans people that do not feel safe in spaces, whether it's in shelters, whether it's in supportive housing, whether it's in schools, whether it's in community centres. The microaggressions, the snide comments are daily for many folks who live in our city. And yes, we are a progressive open city. But actually, that isn't how people always feel living on the street, like in their day to day and not on the street, but living in their day to day grocery stores, libraries, places that they visit every single day. So this work is incredibly important. And I support it. But I must, you know, say that if we don't fund this work, it can't have the impact that it's designed to have. And this work is unfunded. in this current budget. And as far as I'm concerned and what I'm seeing, in order for this work to really take shape, it needs investment. And it needs investment and collaboration across park board, school board, and council. And we need to be working with other stakeholders. We've got organizations like Community, like Rainbow Refugee, like others in the community that use philanthropic dollars and grants from other levels of government that are pulling together capital investment projects to create safe spaces, to create housing. The city needs to be a good partner in that. and not saying, okay, we're doing as much as we can. It is up to us to build spaces where all residents feel safe, particularly those that are marginalized and particularly those in the 2STDD plus community because the decline around mental health and homelessness is just one comment away. It's just one decision away. And so the more that we can lean into this work as a preventative way to support people while they're still, you know, employed and in school and housed, We have a greater chance of long-term outcomes over the course of their life. And for us, generational investment in the people that live in our city. So I support this. I'd like to see it funded. And I'll be pushing for that.
Thank you, Mayor. And echoing all of my colleagues' comments so far this morning is to say an immense thanks for the work of our staff teams and all of the individuals that were surveyed and participated and offered their lived experience. Like Councillor Bligh, I think this is really important work. And as was noted earlier, I also took an interest in some of the feedback, particularly around... There's quite a contrast here when you look at the slide about... safety versus inclusion. And acknowledging that there's still a significant percentage of individuals who don't feel safe. But when you contrast that with whether you feel included and you see yourself in the city is a different experience. And... I wanted to reflect on that a little bit, because particularly around the programming piece, when I was with the province, I led and developed and did the implementation of SOGI 123. And it was in a context of trying to... build a framework for schools and to be more inclusive so all kids within the 2SLGBTIQ plus community felt safe and included in their school environment. It's a lot different when you're looking at a scale of citywide. We're not talking about just a building with one group of people. You're talking about an entire city. But what I remember from that work was, again, as we were looking at an educational context is Kids wanted to be their authentic selves. And that's really difficult when you don't see yourself in the system. You don't see yourself in the school context. You don't see yourself in the learning materials. You don't see yourself in the books. You don't see your family environment. And I would liken that to the broader community. And that's what I see in that second part of the pie there around. inclusion is there is a real gap there and what I also like about this action plan is you've got some very concrete focus on areas that where we can make a difference as a city we aren't going to be able to solve everything but when we look at within our lane what are some things that we can do Councillor Kirby untucked on on washrooms that was highlighted in the report that focus on housing we've had a number of conversations at this table around the lack of shelter spaces. So overall, I would just like to say, I think that this is a really good piece of work. It's a good foundation. I know it's building on many other years of work and I'm happy to support it today. And I think there is lots of opportunity to collaborate. All of the work I did when I worked provincially was in collaboration. We often worked on shoestring budgets, but we found ways to work in collaboration with other organizations. And I think as long as we keep focused on the big picture of what are we trying to achieve here And we marry that up with these really concrete actions. I think we will have success with this strategy. But I think that, as was noted, the lived experience really came through in this. And so I'm really happy to endorse it. So thank you very much.
Thank you, Councillor. I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for the incredibly important work that you're doing to keep communities safe, to keep people safe, highlighting the issues, but also coming up with solutions, recommendations, and you're making a big difference in a lot of lives. So thank you. With that, seeing no one else in the queue, I'm now going to call the vote.
Great, and that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, so that completes report number one.
We'll move on to report number six. Issues report proposed land use change for former Molson Brewery exceptional industrial site. Now, before we begin this agenda item, if anyone believes that they have a conflict of interest, now is the time to disclose it. Seeing none, this item does not have a team member presentation. Council, you may have up to five minutes to ask questions of our team members. Are there any questions?
No? Okay. Councillor Maloney.
Thank you. I'm interested to know whether there's been any discussion about this item this site in order of priority compared to the other sites owned by the same developer and why they haven't been developed and whether there's been any attempts to use this as leverage to get better outcomes for the residents of Vancouver.
Good morning, Mayor and Members of Council. Matt Shilito, Director of the Special Projects Office in PDS. Thank you for the question. We do have Peter Webb here from Concord Pacific, who may be best placed to answer the question around priorities for their organization. What I will say is that we have been engaging as staff with Concord on three large sites, a site in Northeast Falls Creek. the old St Paul's site and the Molson site. Of those three, this one has risen to the top of their agenda and therefore we are looking to move that one forward through the first step of a process towards an industrial redesignation of the site.
And how much do you expect the value of this site will appreciate if this process goes ahead?
We haven't done analysis of that yet. We would do so through the rezoning stage. There are essentially three stages to the process for redesignation and approval of this site. This report before you today is the first step of that process, seeks to initiate the first step of that process, which would be a change to the official development plan, the upcoming official development plan designation from industrial and employment to mixed-use high-rise too. The next stage would be seeking an amendment from the Metro Vancouver board to change the designation again to a general urban designation there. And then the following process would be the rezoning. And then that last stage of the process is where we would get into the financial analysis of what is the uplift in land value associated with introducing non-industrial uses, primarily residential in addition to some additional industrial uses. What would be the land value impact of that? And as we do with all our rezonings, what contribution could that land value increase make towards things like public amenities and affordable housing? So that's several steps down the process, but something we would obviously look at carefully at the rezoning stage as we normally do.
And what do you expect the timeframe on that, getting it all the way through rezoning and development permit?
We're a few years away through that. So this first stage of the process, the ODP amendment, we're looking forward to consulting on that and bringing that forward to council at a public hearing in July. That would then go to Metro. They have their own process, which requires approval by the Metro board and engagement with affected parties. And then pending that decision and enactment of that ODP amendment by council, we typically spend a year or more on a rezoning of this scale, likely longer than that to public hearing. There's often an enactment phase beyond that of six months to a year that can be run concurrently with development permits. So we're probably three years away from development permits on this site, assuming, you know, that all those steps work according to the normal process.
And what kind of, I guess, low-impact employment uses could this site be usefully put to, given its situation close to Senac? which is going to have a lot of residential development, even though it's not contiguous with a lot of other industrial lands, what employment opportunities could it be used for if the market conditions, say, were different in a few years' time?
Yeah, so I mean, to be determined through the process and ultimately secured through the rezoning, but some thoughts for now in terms of sort of lighter industrial uses, things like laboratories, creative products manufacturing, production studios. I think we understand the landowner is interested in tech uses, office uses, potentially hotel, retail service uses. So really quite a broad spectrum, including both industrial uses under our existing industrial use definition and non-industrial uses that would nevertheless provide what we call job space, essentially employment generating spaces.
And I think I'm running out of time. Thanks very much.
Yeah, thanks. May I just point out procedure first? I'm just confirming that staff had not prepared a presentation on this at all. Is that correct?
At all? No, there was no overview you were intending to?
I'm happy to provide a one-minute overview if that's helpful. We don't have a formal presentation.
Well, that sort of puts me in a position of using my time, but okay. Maybe I'll just follow up and answer your questions then. Can you just, I think, following up on the previous questions, the page two of the report suggests to redesignate Molson site land use from industrial employment to mixed-use high-rise, too. Can you just perhaps expand, and maybe that is part of that one-minute option on the potential uses? It's commercial, light, industrial, and residential coexisting. Is that correct?
That's right, exactly. A range of light industrial uses that would be compatible with residential, and then a range of other non-industrial uses, thinking of things like retail, services, hotel, office uses, perhaps a tech focus that the Concord Pacific seems interested in pursuing.
Okay, and so following up on that, since you mentioned tech, is there an opportunity with, it's not common, it's pretty rare in the city now, a landlocked city that's becoming more developed and a more mature city over time. Is there an opportunity with a large site like this to be very intentional about that type of use, whether it's tech or a specific type of light industrial or creation of a precinct, for example, that might support a particular sector of our economy?
Yes, I think that's right. I think that's one of the things that makes this site stand out is its size and therefore the opportunity to create a critical mass that might be particularly focused on one sector. And again, I mentioned tech and be partly obviously or significantly in the interest of the landowner to bring forward the mix of uses that they're interested in doing. But yes, a critical mass on a large site like this could form a cluster.
Okay, and as part of the process, would staff be engaging in that dialogue with the landowner?
Certainly, yes. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, through the landowner and all affected parties as under recommendation A, the direction to engage with all affected parties, but the landowner, of course, being one of those.
Okay, two more questions. If the site's current designation remains, what's the likelihood that it would be used based on its current zoning?
Well, we think it's unlikely that it would be used for heavy industrial uses. We don't consider it to be suitable for heavy industrial uses given the increasingly residential context and really the lack of connection that the site has to the trucking network, particularly the highway network and the rail network. It's somewhat orphaned from those and in a very different context with... Residential uses so the kind of heavy industrial uses allowed on the existing zoning We wouldn't see as being compatible with the the emerging context of the site.
Okay. Thanks, and then final question is just read back to the timing piece just clarifying so Potentially a trajectory for a public hearing to this council before July, but a metro designation subsequent to that likely in the fall
That's right. That's the intention. We would formally apply to Metro for a change to the regional growth strategy, you know, pending Council's approval and principle of public hearing on the ODP amendment. And we would look to move that forward as quickly as possible. And, in fact, recommendation B in the report is that we engage with staff at Metro Vancouver to kind of explore the way to expedite that process.
Okay. But likely not until fall.
It wouldn't be until the fall.
Okay. I'm going to leave it there for now and save some time. Thanks.
Thanks very much. Can you just re-frame how this will move through the process with the other four sites that were identified as that initial report that we dealt with last summer? We've talked about Railtown, we've talked about the second in Yukon site, and then there's a few others. So what does that look like?
Yeah, so this is based on the industrial lands framework that covered those five sites. This is the one that's sort of unique, given its circumstances, being a standalone site. And again, we've not considered to be suitable for heavy industry. So we're moving this forward directly through an ODP amendment process. And the other four areas, and it's important to emphasize, there are areas more than one site with multiple considerations, are all being looked at through a planning process. So there's being Railtown, Main and Terminal area, Mount Pleasant, and the Marine Gateway. They are all looking at relative levels of detail and a relatively extensiveness. the potential of all of those sites through area planning processes, and they're all on a track to come forward back to council next year.
Okay, thanks for confirming that. Has there been any discussion with the applicant, and we're not going to be able to ask questions of the speaker who's here representing Concord, so that's why I'm asking it through you, in terms of transportation or options for a light surface rail line or just really what the transportation plan would be should this all happen? happen?
Yeah, that's absolutely a key question that we'll work through in the detail through the rezoning, subject to the principle of the change of use being established. One of the things about this site is it has excellent walking and cycling connections already and the potential to improve them. So improving connections to downtown, to the Broadway subway, improving bus connections again to the Broadway subway and to downtown.
But specifically the light rail line that exists there right now and goes straight to Olympic Village, Canada line.
Yeah, that is the streetcar. Yeah, that is a challenging proposition in terms of creating a viable business case for that. What we understand from our transportation college is a more likely answer in terms of connecting to Olympic villages through a more rapid bus, a dedicated bus service along Second, rather than the streetcar.
Is it possible to have a sort of a fulsome report back on that? Because I know we've actually received proposals from some light rail, surface rail companies that have sort of shown significant interest and also capital investment in that light rail line that may have not seen the light of day, if you will, but maybe should be considered given the size of this development adjacent to Sanhok.
For sure. And we absolutely will consider that as an option and we will look at that and report back as part of the ODP amendment process.
Okay. It was asked before and it's been flagged in the public, so I think it's worth asking. You know, we do have another sort of significant site similar to this in Northeast Falls Creek that has sort of been discussed in various, you know, wide-scale planning meetings efforts and work that the council's done, but sort of how do we manage the imperative to sort of go through all of this process in good faith that something would actually get underway by the developer?
Well, we believe the developer is interested in good faith in moving forward with this project. They've identified it as their highest priority of the three to move forward. We can't compel a developer to move forward with an approval once they get one. So we have limited ability to compel that. I would say, though, that we are also in discussions with the landowner, this landowner around the Northeast Falls Creek site as well, and all rolling up our sleeves with best efforts to try and move that forward too. So it's not exclusive to this site. We're working on all three of the Concord sites, and Northeast Falls Creek is absolutely a priority for the city to move forward as well.
Yes, no, no one's questioning that. Just the Seaforth Armory in terms of Canadian Armed Forces and working with them directly, is there any context or consideration that Council should be aware of at this point?
Yeah, we would work with them as neighbours to this site. They have not approached us in terms of redevelopment plans. The Seaforth Armory building itself is heritage listed. There's a relatively new office building adjacent to that. But as part of a good planning process, we would look at the context. the surrounding sites and see what interest there is in moving forward with compatible development.
Thank you. That's my time.
Thanks very much, Mayor. A lot of my questions just got asked. I was going to ask a little bit about the D&D property as well. And I am sort of in the question with regards to the streetcar. It's my understanding that the rail bed itself has largely been preserved whether it's right up to the Sanok property through past Granville Island and beyond. So for the most part, we're not entirely closing the door. You just said that there isn't a current business case for any kind of ground-based transportation like a rail-based one.
That's correct. I mean, there is infrastructure in place and there is therefore a theoretical opportunity there subject to the business case and also coming forward with what is the most efficient way to move people from this Molson site and the emerging Sanhok development eastwards towards the Olympic Village Station. So we would certainly continue to consider the streetcar as an option among others. I certainly don't mean to rule it out today, but I think it's important to note that It is a challenging proposition in terms of a business case.
It would seem to me, I mean, I know that the Sanhok project is very unique in its way, Molson Land and any other kind of lift that we're going to see off of these areas does potentially present. We're talking significant amount of population growth, especially around Sanhok. So people moving will... increasingly become the the big question what we're doing especially when we've decided this is not going to be a very car oriented development so anyway I look forward to again sort of keeping the flame burning a little bit on on what we might be able to do that route the only other question I have is just with regards to the the transition that might be proposed for this site Sanok being a very bold, very tall residential development that faces the back, the north side of this site, and then the Armory District being more of a commercial, light industrial, you know, car dealerships, various other art studios that faces the south side of the property. How do we sort of envision that kind of, or ask that there be some kind of transition between those two kinds of uses on that property?
Yeah, no, that's a great point. And again, to be determined through a rezoning stage where we would get into those questions of built form. But I think you highlighted the obvious sort of move there, which would be to make a transition in scale from the significant tower scale on Sanok gradually downwards towards the south, towards the armory site and the... and the broad slopes industrial area, the slopes industrial area will remain mid-rise, largely low-rise and mid-rise, so there's an obvious move there to kind of provide some context to Sanark and create a transition in scale. And again, another thing about this site is the size of the site means there's an opportunity for a very wide variety of built forms to create that transition.
I'm just going to pose this question just because the site is adjacent to Department of National Defence land that has been there for a very long time. I imagine working with our federal partners is not an easy thing to do, but we do know that there is a growing conversation around Canada's defence infrastructure. infrastructure and it's the necessity of making sure that the country is stronger in that regard. I would be very interested to see whether our city staff will be undertaking those kind of intergovernmental conversations with regards to this site, again, to make sure that that transition between uses is quite clear and that we're not sort of faced with a... a barbed wire fence that might be there currently to try and make this strictly feel like it's a place to place vehicles, which it has been for many years and so on. I know that there is an office building there now, but it would be interesting to see that kind of work continue between our two governments.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we would routinely consult them as a neighbor, but I think you've put your finger on the unique aspect of that site. You know, being a federal and a military government entity, that brings in unique circumstances that we would need to think carefully about and work with them on as a, you know, senior level of government. Yeah.
Thanks, Mayor. Thank you for the updates. Great questions asked by Council. I do have one, and I appreciate it's a bit of a hypothetical, but I think it's worthy of some attention. This is a Type 3 amendment that has to go to Metro Vancouver. And in my experience, last term, the City of Surrey brought a Type 3 amendment going the different direction. It was around 245 hectares of agricultural and rural land. to move to industrial commercial park. It was incredibly contentious at the board. It narrowly passed by that board in the favor of Surrey's request. What happens if the Metro Vancouver board looks at this and says, no, I've heard a number of mayors speaking out about the importance of preserving industrial lands in the region. And where does that leave the city of Vancouver if that were to take place? And I recognize it will be a future board. It won't be the current board that's in place by the time we get there. But could you comment on that and what your experience has been with that?
Yeah, I mean, it is something of a hypothetical and not one that we have faced in the city of Vancouver, to the best of my knowledge. I think, you know, we, having identified this site as somewhat unique, we feel there's a very strong land use rationale for the change of use that we're proposing. And we feel that it matches up well with Metro Vancouver's own criteria for these kinds of redesignations. And with the regional growth strategy, which identifies a number of goals that this redesignation could help to hit. It would be wrong of me to speculate on what we might do should the Metro Vancouver vote turn this redesignation down. We would have to look at that and options to move forward at that time. But I think it's difficult to speculate at the moment.
Thank you. I appreciate that. That's all my questions.
Yeah, thanks. Great questions so far from my colleagues. Thinking about Sanok and the 6,000 units we're expecting there in terms of rental, do we have a sense of what could be achieved on this site, or is it too early in the process?
It's really too early to say in terms of the mix and the quantum of both the job space and the residential. I think we could probably say that even with a very substantial amount of non-residential space, there is probably scope on a size like this in a central location like this to introduce several thousand units. But the number is very much to be determined through the rezoning process.
Okay. And are there any... I guess, requirements at this stage when we're going to seek this amendment from Metro around the tenure of the housing that would be on this site, like rental or strata.
Not requirements per se, but we do know that Metro Vancouver is interested in, as part of one of its goals in its regional growth strategy, a diverse and affordable housing mix. And so, you know, we would certainly be looking on a site like this to be identifying a variety of tenures from social housing through rental, below market rental to, you know, likely condominiums. The exact mix to be determined, again, through the rezoning stage, we have policies that apply to sites like this, large sites like this in the city routinely, and that includes a mix of that kind. But the exact percentages would have to be determined through the rezoning.
Okay. But that policy requiring that mix that you just mentioned, that would be articulated through this process to Metro?
That's right.
Okay. Okay, great. That's it for me. Thanks. Thank you very much, Councillor Orr.
Yeah, thanks for the report. Lots of great questions. Some of them of mine have been asked. But can staff provide a sort of estimate of the value of the removal of the view corridors over St. Paul's and its North Falls Creek sites?
I really wouldn't be able to speculate on that. Not an analysis that we have done. We can certainly do some analysis of the additional height achievable on both of those sites with the view cones removed. But it would be...
challenging to capture to turn that into a into a dollar figure immediately certainly i wouldn't want to speculate that on for sure no i'm just i'm getting a i'm just trying to get a sense of how we're sort of working with these three sort of unique sites are we leveraging them against each other sort of to provide the maximum benefit or are they kind of in isolation
Well, I think we're looking at all of them in isolation on their own merits and the opportunities they create to deliver on the goals that we have as a city, the planning goals we have as a city, whether it's job space, affordable housing, other public benefits. So we don't really look at them as a portfolio as such. They're all quite different, but we certainly do look at them consistently to see how they can deliver on public objectives that are in council policy.
And then just shifting to sort of Mount Pleasant... Do we have an estimate of the number of new jobs that were generated from that densification that has been rapidly happening since the 2010s?
I might ask my colleague Chris Robertson to try and address that. Chris Robertson, Director of Citywide and Regional Planning. We have done some initial work through the Broadway plan. I don't have those figures here with me today, but certainly could get them to Council.
Okay, thanks. That would be cool. And then just sort of in general, our job-related rezonings, this could be for Chris too. Are we seeing a rise or a fall in specific sort of job-related rezonings?
Yeah, what I would say is we've seen a real uptick in interest in primarily industrial-focused employment. Obviously, with the office market downturn, that has declined, but the industrial side of our portfolios hasn't, and we see strong, you know, tenancies and... uh again in the industrial we do expect the the office to recover as well and then you know time's always the you know uh crystal ball effort but uh certainly what we're hearing even from the industry now is that the office is starting to to pick up again too great thanks that that's all my questions thank you councillor fry yeah so i had to go back in time because i actually
In 2016, I wrote about this when I was doing some research work for Adrian Carr when the purchase first happened. And at the time, there was conversation around the Broad Slopes IC District rezoning policy, which I don't see mentioned in this report. Has that Broad Slopes IC District been superseded by Broadway Plan and the regional context statement in its entirety?
That's right. It's been superseded by the Broadway plan in terms of policy for that area. And so there is policy through the Broadway plan to intensify and broaden the mix of job spaces within Barrage Slopes. However, it is maintained as a non-residential area.
Right. And I think it did talk about one-to-one industrial residential, if I'm not mistaken. That was the sort of intent at the time.
There's not residential allowed in the Barrage Slopes industrial area. It's purely commercial and industrial uses.
Interesting, because I seem to have from my notes that it did allow industrial and residential mixed. I guess it's irrelevant, though, because it's been superseded, so we can technically move on from that. Can you just expand upon the relevance of this site as a non-contiguous industrial land, which is a statement that's made in your report here?
Yes, I think the fact that it's a standalone site with a predominantly or at least certainly increasingly residential context, not contiguous with other industrial lands, it's important to mention that the Broad Slopes area is a general employment area rather than an industrial area. And therefore, it's a key question because one of the points that are raised in Metro Vancouver's criteria for addressing these kinds of redesignations is the degree to which the speculative effect might be wider than the site that's being considered for redesignation. And we do consider this to be a standalone, heavy industrial site that's no longer suitable for that use.
So in the context of the regional context statement and industrial land preservation stuff, contiguous sites have more kind of inherent value as industrial land because it's better integrated with infrastructure or that kind of thing?
Or at least, yeah, one needs to start to think about the broader context within it and the size of the industrial area that it's contiguous with, and that becomes an issue or can become an issue in terms of the speculative effect of a redesignation.
And last for me, just because some of the sort of framing around this is an urgency to deal with this as a matter of the ODP, but my understanding is that this, should we approve it, will not necessarily inform the ODP because it still has to go through Metro in the regional context?
That's right. It does. So really what's before council today is a recommendation to initiate the first of a three-step process. And that is to amend the upcoming citywide official development plan that will be coming forward to council for consideration in March. And we would then bring that official development plan amendment back to council. Target of that date for that is July. Then there's the Metro Vancouver Regional Growth Strategy Amendment process, and then rezoning. And so really it's a matter of trying to make this initial step around simply the principle of changing the use designation on the site, noting there is a Metro approval and then a rezoning to follow.
But that needs to be in this ODP that we're mandated to provide the province or by the province?
That's right. So we are not bringing forward this change within the first iteration of the ODP that's coming forward to council in March. And the reason being that then it would be offside with the regional growth strategy and require the whole citywide ODP to be subject to a Metro Vancouver approval, which would jeopardize our provincially mandated deadline of getting the ODP in place by the end of June. So we're doing it subsequent to the first iteration of the CDY and ODP being approved by council.
Okay, so now we're going to hear from registered speakers for this report. Public speakers should state whether they are in support or opposition of the recommendations and may only speak once. I'm also going to ask speakers if they are residents of Vancouver, if not noted.
So our first public speaker is Peter Webb.
Hi, Peter Webb, Senior Vice President, Concord Pacific. Concord Pacific, of course, is a development company, so I'm the guy that's handling the work. The Molson's property at the Barrage Bridgehead was purchased in 2016, I think, as has been pointed out. The site shares a 700-foot property line with the Sanak Project. And Sanak is a First Nations, Squamish... a property under self-governance with federal support for high-density development, effectively rezoning the area. Sanak will be 4.5 million square feet, roughly, and roughly 6,500 residential homes, including towers ranging from 20 to 60 stories. The Molson Brewery facility left the site shortly following the purchase, and the new facility is in Chilliwack, where they have better access to trucking and so on. They took the jobs with them. Wilson left the area due to an inappropriateness of industrial land use on the broadside. And the industrial land use is really a result of there's no railway connection, there's no reasonable truck route, there's no water access for shipping, and it's not continuous with industrial uses in the area.
Industrial designation is primarily a result of the brewery's existence. The use is now obsolete due to nature of the adjacent uses. And it's truly an orphan site, as was discussed earlier. It's a result of the brewery there being itself historically. Concord Division is a mixed-use serving community providing live, work, play opportunities, along with the associated amenities. This is a model of our expo land development over the last 30 years and many of the master plan communities across Canada. In addition, there would, of course, be solutions for the commercial offset or the industrial offset of use. In an effort to recognize the loss of the Molson's job space, Concord is prepared to include an equal amount of commercial space on the new community, matching the square footage of the historic Molson's brewery building. The new job space would facilitate more jobs than ever generated at Molson's. During the history of Molson's on-site, it only ever generated 250 jobs maximum, typically lay around 150 jobs. So we're thinking if we replace the same scale of building... with a revised version of what is industrial these days, it could be up to a couple of thousand jobs based. The new master plan community would be designed to establish a more resolved traffic pattern through the area and could create a more symbiotic relationship with the surrounding community as a result. Honker recognizes and supports the city's efforts in the ODP process and the resulting adoption of a City of Vancouver Metro Land Use Redesignation to General Urban.
Thank you very much. Okay, that is the end of our speaker's list. So Peter, thank you very much for coming in. Would someone like to move a motion? Great, Councillor Claston, seconded by Councillor Zhou. Councillor, is there any discussion? Seeing no one in the queue, I'm going to call up Councillor Maloney.
Thank you. Yeah, I'm concerned about... but Concord has three major properties on False Creek and has seen their value soar without building a single unit. I understand the implications of the changes and that this is an orphan site, but Concord Pacific has sat on the Expo lands for 40 years and has been able to seek rezoning of the Expo lands since 2018 and This includes some of the very best market conditions for loans and homes and lending and market conditions were very good in the early 2020s. If council approves this rezoning down the track, the value of this site will jump. The planning department has just had a substantial budget cut and I can't justify the prioritisation of this work. that has potential to deprioritise other important planning work, particularly when the Expo lands are such a hole in the heart of Vancouver. I mean, it's a parking lot where there should be a vibrant community and it's having effects all around and they could have been avoided by development happening earlier. So we have an opportunity... to exercise leverage against Concord Pacific, and so I say it's time for Concord Pacific to follow through on its 40-year-old commitment, and I'll be voting against this today.
Thanks. Thank you very much. Seeing no one else in the queue, I'm going to call the vote.
Please go to the voting panel. And that passes with Councillor Maloney in opposition. That completes report number six.
Okay. Moving along. Bylaws. We have 14 bylaws on the agenda for enactment. Bylaw number 11 has been withdrawn. Before we begin this agenda item, if anyone believes they have a conflict of interest, now is the time to declare it. Does anybody have a conflict to disclose? Seeing no one in the queue. Bylaw 1 was from the public hearing on February the 10th, 2026. Councillors Frye, Classen, Orr, and Marisim were absent for this item at the public hearing. Councillor Frye, have you reviewed the proceedings and will you be voting on the enactment? Councillor Klassen? Councillor Orr? And I have not and I will not. Would someone like to move the motion to adopt bylaws 1 through 10 and 12 through 15? Councillor Klassen, seconded by Councillor Kirby-Young. Is there... Council, is there any discussion? All those in favour say aye. All those opposed say nay. Great. The motion carries unanimously. The list of approved bylaws can be found on the city's website. Administrative motions. Number one, closure and sale of a portion of road adjacent to 1710 through 1730 East Penter Street. Before we begin, does anybody believe that they have a conflict of interest they need to disclose? Great. Council, are there any questions for team members?
Would someone like to move a motion? Councillor Klassen, seconded by Councillor Montague. Council, is there any discussion? All those in favour, say aye. All those opposed, say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously. Notice of council member motions. Are there any notices of council member motions for upcoming standing committee meetings? A reminder to please state the title of the motion and the date of the standing committee meeting. on which you intend to move the motion, and be sure to send the title and date of the Standing Committee meeting via email to the clerk. Councillor Kirby Young.
Yeah, thanks, Mayor. I have one notice of motion submitted for the March 11th Standing Committee meeting on behalf of...
the City's Transportation Advisory Committee, and it is entitled Macro Meets Micro, Connecting Micromobility Services to Transit and Improving Micromobility Network Connections and Convenience in Vancouver.
Yeah, notice of motion as well for March 11th Standing Committee, entitled A One-Time Extraordinary Grant for Granville Street Activation during the FIFA World Cup 2026, submitted by myself and Mayor Sim. Thank you. Councillor Maloney.
Yeah, I'd like to give notice of motion on motion for, I think, the March 11th meeting, which is cheap, easy, and everywhere, unlocking the full potential of shared mobility to reduce traffic congestion across Metro Vancouver.
Thank you. Councillor Orr? Yeah, thank you so much. I also have notice of a motion on March 11th, advancing the right to food and public food infrastructure. Thank you very much.
Councillor Maloney.
Sorry, can I just make a correction to that? Councillor Orr is co-moving that. I forgot to mention that.
Thanks. Thank you very much. Okay, seeing no one in the queue, I'm going to move on from members' motions, and we're going to move into new business. We have one item of new business on the agenda today, and that's requests for leaves of absence. Now, this motion has been circulated to Council at the beginning of the meeting and is available on the screen. So let's just make sure everyone can see it.
It's hard to read. Can we reduce it so it's all in author?
Yeah. Thanks. I sent in one this morning that I thought the clerks were going to add to the new business item It was for this evening from 5 p.m On civic business and I just couldn't see it in that list scrolling. Is it there?
So, okay so that one is in there Okay counselor, thank you
I sent one in for March 12th. I don't see it reflected, but if I've missed it, please let me know.
It was March 12th for civic business all day.
It's a council reserve.
Thank you.
That was it. We're good. Great.
Thanks. I similarly sent in one March 11th, 4 to 6, for personal reasons. I don't see it up there, but I'm trying to scan right now, but I think it's missing.
Thank you.
That all works?
Yeah. Great. Thanks.
Great. Thank you. Okay, seeing no one else in the queue, would someone like to move a motion? Councillor Domenato, seconded by Councillor Meiszner. Council, is there any discussion? No? Okay, all those in favour say aye. All those opposed say nay. Great, the motion carries unanimously. Council, are there any other items of new business?
Councillor Zhou. Yeah, thanks, Mayor. So, as we know, this past Sunday, Chinatown came alive with the other matters. No, this new business. I heard about other matters.
Okay, so yeah, as we know, the past Sunday, Chinatown came alive with the Lunar New Year parade with over 100,000 people attending. This year, we saw a record-breaking of 109 groups marching in the parade, reflecting our city's strength, vibrancy, resilience in our community. I would like to really express my sincere appreciation to the co-organizers of this incredible event, the Chinese Benevolent Association, Chinese Culture Center, Chinatown BIA, SUCCESS, the Chinese Freemason Association, the Shongyi Benevolent Association of Canada. Their leadership and dedication made this celebration possible. I also want to highlight the Lunar New Year Gala held at the former Flota restaurant, which was a tremendous success, bringing together nearly 1,000 attendees. Imagine, you know, last week, the restaurant was completely empty. And a few weeks before, the kitchen and the washroom were not working. People, you know, showed me the photo yesterday after the event. All tables, chairs have been moved, and they are doing some cleaning today. Tremendous work. I also want to be grateful to my colleagues for your unanimous support for the motion that Councillor Kirby and I brought forward. And I also want to sincerely thank the City of Vancouver staff for their exceptional efforts in exploiting this permitting process to make this event possible. Without your support, this event will not be possible. And, you know, if the event is canceled, the community will be very, very disappointed. Thank you as well to all the counselors who attended both the parade and the gala. Your presence really meant a great deal to the community. It was meaningful to see counselors being there, not simply taking photos, but genuinely engage with residents and celebrate the most important festival in the Chinese community. And I hope you all enjoyed the evening as the community appreciated your participation. I enjoyed myself. I know, you know, Councillor Wu, you enjoyed yourself there as well. I think you left the event even after me. So thank you for doing that. Finally, to my council colleagues, I hope this will not be the last time we see you in Chinatown or in the Chinese community. I think it's an essential part of our history and culture in our community. It deserves continuous presence, support, and engagement, not during Lunar New Year, not only in the election year, but throughout the year ahead. I really hope you listen to the Chinese community because they were historically underrepresented. So thanks for your support.
Thank you very much, Counselor Zhou. Okay, so we sort of just rolled right into inquiries and other matters. So are there any other inquiries or other matters? Counselor Klassen.
Yes, Mayor, I've got two. First of all, I just want to acknowledge the passing of Dale Lutz. Dale served on the Older Persons Advisory and Elders Advisory Committee for 10 years, including on OPAC's Transportation and Mobility Subcommittee. As OPIAC representative for the city's accessibility committee, he was a strong advocate on issues related to mobility and aging, sidewalks, curb cuts, and bike lanes among them. And Dale was a tenacious individual with a deep passion for improving the life of older adults in her city. He was a mentor to fellow OPIAC members and provided thoughtful leadership at the committee table and in the community. So he is deeply missed and truly respected for his work. For the next one, I'm compelled to stand.
Today marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's illegal occupation and invasion of Ukraine. It's been four years since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. For four years, the Ukrainian people have endured unimaginable hardship. The destruction of cities, the loss of loved ones, the targeting of civilian infrastructure, and documented war crimes, including the forced deportation and kidnapping of children. And yet, for four years, they have demonstrated extraordinary courage. They have defended their homeland on the battle lines. They have protected their communities in cities under siege. They have preserved their language, culture, and democratic aspirations in the face of brutality. On my mother's side of the family, we share a close connection to the Ukrainian diaspora. I have family who are Ukrainian. This is not an abstract conflict for many in our city. It is personal. Vancouver is home to a proud and vibrant Ukrainian community, and today we stand with them. We honour the heroes defending Ukraine's sovereignty, We mourn the innocent lives lost, and we reaffirm our support for a just and lasting peace grounded in freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. Slava Ukraine. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. Just a question for staff. In light of the province pausing the community housing fund, which was a fund that required social housing buildings to have 20% shelter rate in each building. And since the Downtown Eastside rezoning aligned with the shelter rate requirement with the program that now seems to no longer exist, will council be restoring the 33% shelter rate requirement in the downtown east side, which was previously the case. Thanks.
I wish I could answer that more fully, Councillor Orr, but I actually can't.