by Nate Lewis, Vancity Lookout News
Sometimes the smallest bits of information can turn up a much bigger story. That’s what happened earlier this month with the release of an innocuous memo – a two-page list appointing park board commissioners to liaison roles with local community centre associations (CCAs) and other advisory bodies.
What we found is that over the past two years, there’s been a significant discrepancy in liaison appointments amongst commissioners. Four commissioners – three of whom left the ABC Party in 2023 – held all these roles with CCAs in 2024, and in early January the board announced the same balance will hold for 2025.
The sidelining of ABC commissioners – which was brought about by other commissioners, community partners, and, in part, by their own choice – underscores the lack of trust between municipal political factions, with one core issue at the centre: support for, or opposition against, keeping an elected park board.
The politics of who is tasked with representing the park board amongst community partners – a not-often discussed role of commissioners – illuminates the deep political divisions and lack of trust that’s erupted into public view since Vancouver Mayor and ABC Party leader Ken Sim announced his plan to abolish the elected park board in late 2023.
The Mayor’s plan to eliminate the park board resulted in a schism that broke apart ABC’s majority on the park board as three commissioners – Laura Christensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky, and Scott Jensen – decided to leave the party, and team up with Green Party Commissioner Digby to form a new majority opposed to the mayor’s plan.
• Since then, Sim has emphasized that bringing the park board under direct city governance would save approximately $7 million per year, according to City News.
Getting a deeper look into the roles of liaisons themselves highlights the importance of direct democracy for the park board’s partners. Liaison roles are one of the governance systems that would be eliminated if the plan to absorb parks and recreation into city hall’s already broad portfolio is successful.
Importance of liaison roles for CCA’s
One piece of the significant fallout from Sim’s big move in December 2023 was the Association Presidents Group (APG), which represents 19 Vancouver community centres, rejecting the mayor’s plan, calling it “undemocratic.”
APG chair Jerry Fast, who is also the president of the Kitsilano Community Centre and the spokesperson for the Save our Park Board Coalition, said the commissioner liaison roles are one of the main reasons the APG wants to retain the elected park board.
The liaisons “give us direct, ongoing, regular access to the elected park board, who have decision-making authority and who can direct staff if need be, to work with us and resolve issues, or help us with projects that we’re hoping to implement, and so on,” Fast explained.
Comm. Bastyovanszky, the liaison with the Kits community centre, attends most of their association board meetings, Fast said.
The focus of the liaison roles is policy and governance, rather than specific operational issues, according to park board staff.
Fast said that direct contact won’t happen under the new structure the city proposed in their November 2024 Parks and Recreation Governance Transition Planning report, which recommended the city establish a Community Partner Relations Office made up of three to five city staff members.
It would make the process “far less democratic, [with] far less direct democracy, and [become] more indirect and bureaucratic,” Fast said.
The city’s report also recommended establishing a council subcommittee made up of five appointed city councillors, who would work in an advisory role with no delegated authority at the subcommittee level.
“We see this leading to a serious deterioration in the priority that parks and recreation receives in this city,” Fast argued.
“When you have elected commissioners who run on a platform in a municipal election of carrying out a program for parks and recreation, and they are elected and accountable to the voters to do that, you necessarily have a much higher priority for the issues around parks and recreation than you will have from city councillors who are running on a whole range of issues,” Fast explained.
Kathleen Bigsby is a board member with the Kerrisdale Community Centre. Their current liaison, Comm. Tom Digby, has been great, “attending every board meeting, providing useful information, and making pertinent comments. He responds quickly to any questions we raise,” Bigsby said.
She added that Digby has been a great improvement on previous commissioner liaisons they’ve had.
Bigsby’s remark highlights the fact that while the liaison roles allow for a direct relationship between elected officials and community centre leadership, that is dependant on each individual commissioner’s capacity and desire to engage with community partners.
The politics of a divided board
Park Board Commissioners, from left to right: Jas Virdi, Marie-Claire Howard, Tom Digby, Angela Haer, Scott Jensen, Brennan Bastyovanszky, and Laura Christensen / Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation
The park board recently released their 2025 list of liaison appointments – assigned at the discretion of the board chair – which tasks commissioners to attend meetings, provide updates, and get feedback from the city’s 21 community centre associations and societies. It also assigns roles for commissioners with various civic advisory committees and community partner groups.
The discrepancy in liaison appointments illustrates the deep rift and competing priorities amongst park board commissioners. On one side, ABC party commissioners, and on the other, community centre associations and Independent commissioners who broke away from ABC as a result of Sim’s announcement.
This year’s appointments included 12 roles for Green Party Comm. Tom Digby, 11 each for Independent Comms. Scott Jensen and Brennan Bastyovanszky, eight for Independent Comm. and board chair Laura Christensen, and three for ABC Party Comm. Angela Haer. ABC Party Comms. Jas Virdi and Marie-Claire Howard were entirely absent from the list.
Following Sim’s announcement and the resulting schism on the park board, the Association Presidents Group “explicitly asked not to have any ABC commissioners appointed as liaisons,” to community centre associations, Comm. Bastyovanszky said.
APG chair Jerry Fast had a slightly different recollection, telling Vancity Lookout the initiative came from the park board side of things. He recalled a park board staffer approaching him in early January 2024 – before liaison appointments for that year were made public – to informally ask what Fast thought of not having ABC commissioners involved in liaison roles with community centres.
“Our reaction was that, no, I didn’t think [ABC commissioners] should be involved, since they voted to eliminate the park board,” Fast said.
“It doesn’t really make sense to have commissioners attending the community centre associations who want to get rid of the park board. It makes for a very awkward situation,” Fast explained.
There was also a successful park board motion in December 2023, formally establishing the board’s opposition to the mayor’s plan — which Virdi, Howard, and Haer opposed — and was a “contributing factor to the idea of distancing from ABC,” according to Bastyovanszky.
With the APG’s blessing, Bastyovanszky, in his role as board chair, chose not to involve the ABC commissioners in liaison roles beginning in 2024. The one exception to that was Haer’s appointment to city council’s Racial and Ethno-Cultural Equity Advisory Committee, a role which she was reappointed to for 2025.
While there isn’t a formal policy for liaison appointments, according to park board staff, the previous park board distributed liaison appointments amongst all commissioners, as did the current board until 2024. The precedent is that the board chair recommends the liaison appointments, staff said.
“I tried to be fair,” incoming board chair Christensen said about the 2025 appointments. “I contacted commissioners before Christmas and asked them what their liaison interests were, and if they could get back to me. Commissioners Howard and Verdi didn’t reply to that. So I took that to [mean] that they are not interested in liaison appointments, so they weren’t assigned any for this year… if they’re not willing to take an interest in the roles, I wasn’t going to assign them to a role that they didn’t want,” she added.
Going into 2025 “there’s definitely still concerns from the community centre associations about having commissioners who support abolishing the park board being their liaisons,” Christensen said. “When the community centre associations have come out in support of keeping the park board, there’s obviously a bit of a conflict there. So just to avoid that kind of uncomfortable conflict, you know, it makes more sense that they don’t hold those roles,” Christensen explained.
Fast concurred, saying he still feels that ABC commissioners shouldn’t be in these roles with community centres due to their support of the mayor’s plan.
“They don’t believe in the elected park board… it’s kind of hard to work with people who aren’t committed to their role,” Fast said.
But Christensen said she did open up many other roles to the ABC commissioners for 2025. “I asked commissioners for their interest in other liaison roles, specifically with some city liaison roles,” Christensen said.
Comm. Howard said she didn’t become aware of a Dec. 20, 2024 email – addressed to all commissioners, soliciting their interest in being committee liaisons – until just before the Dec. 29 deadline, and was unable to respond.
Despite the Dec. 20 email from board chair Christensen, Howard said that the appointments were made “without consultation,” and appointments to council advisory bodies in particular were “overlooked.”
Howard did not respond to Vancity Lookout’s questions regarding whether she was interested in having a liaison position with one of these advisory bodies.
From his perspective, Comm. Virdi told Vancity Lookout he didn’t reply to the Dec. 20 email requesting expressions of interest for the 2025 liaison positions because he’s boycotting the roles. That decision is due to several disputes with Bastyovanszky and other commissioners, including his removal from liaison roles in 2024.
“When the opportunity came this year for the positions, it just, mentally, it hurt me a lot last time, and I just feel like I knew the same thing was going to happen this time, so I just didn’t even put my name forward,” Virdi said.
In 2024 “I fought so hard, and I was getting nowhere,” Virdi said. “At the end of the day, the authority resides with the majority. So this time, I didn’t bother for that reason. It was a traumatic experience [last year] because staff weren’t able to help,” he added.
“I would love to have the opportunity to be a liaison. But I can’t support a system where there’s prejudice and unfairness,” Virdi said.
In an email to Bastyovanszky and others in April 2024, Virdi lodged several complaints, such as not being included in any liaison roles and not being able to submit certain photos to the Chair’s Report. In the email, which Virdi shared with Vancity Lookout, he asked Bastyovanszky for “a letter from every CCA and advisory committee that shows they do not want me as their liaison.”
“Angela Haer supports the dissolution of the park board and yet you put her on the ethnic advisory,” Virdi added.
Haer is the one ABC commissioner who seems to still be able to work with the non-ABC majority, albeit in a limited way. Vancity Lookout reached out to Haer for comment but the commissioner did not respond by publication time.
In the email chain, Bastyovanszky explained that “Commissioner Haer proactively expressed interest to the Chair in working with a committee as a liaison and offered to volunteer for her appointed liaison role. This email thread is the first time you [Virdi] have expressed any interest to the Chair to be on a committee,” Bastyovanszky said.
“I’m still there to fight,” Virdi told Vancity Lookout. “I believe [the] park board needs to be dissolved because it’s inefficient… I’m there just to make sure that the mayor’s plan goes forward, because I do think it’s better for the city. At the end of the day, I love being a commissioner. I know I’m losing my position, but I’m doing it because I know it’s the right decision for Vancouverites… I feel like this is a redundant board, and it’s wasting taxpayers money,” Virdi explained.
Having “the workload spread across seven [commissioners] is better for the community… We would much rather have some trust in the ABC commissioners, but they’re not to be trusted with parks and recreation. They burnt trust with the community,” Bastyovanszky said.
More work to go around
The loss of trust in ABC commissioners amongst their colleagues and community partner groups has the practical effect of increasing the responsibilities of the four other commissioners.
Comm. Christensen said that a reduced roster of commissioners in liaison roles means a bigger workload.
“That means sometimes attending two community association meetings in one night. So you’re going to one meeting, then driving across the city to another meeting. But that’s part of the job, and I think that’s what we signed up for… it’s an important role that we take very seriously,” Christensen said.
Comm. Bastyovanszky said the workload is too much. “I’m so overloaded. The four of us [himself, Christensen, Digby, and Jensen], we now have like two full time jobs with the amount of workload, working with all the community centres… We’re attending as many CCA meetings as we can, and we’re still maintaining a good relationship with the associations, but it’s too many,” he said.
The fact that this current workload is already a lot for four commissioners who are only responsible for parks and recreation doesn’t augur well for CCAs if management of Vancouver parks and recreaction is brought under a five-person city council sub-committee, plus three to five city staffers, as recommended by the city’s latest transition report.
“We can’t believe that city councillors are going to come and attend our board of directors meetings the way commissioners do,” Fast said. “They don’t have the time. They’re going to be taking on the responsibilities of park board commissioners, on top of everything else that they’re responsible for. That’s what they want to do. It’s hard to believe,” the APG chair said.
What it means
The big picture takeaway is that eliminating the park board would result in less direct democracy at these fine grain municipal levels for places like community centres.
The broken trust that resulted from the mayor’s 2023 announcement is a big factor here, which has had ripple effects on the political alignment of the board and the day-to-day tasks of park board commissioners.
The schism also means the public has far greater insight into the inner workings of this unique civic body, which likely wouldn’t expose itself in such detail if not for the overt threat to the park board’s existence. While the entrenched hostilities between the two camps is not a good thing on its face, it does provide the public with greater access and understanding of the board’s current governance practices and how the proposed plan to integrate services may impact community services we all rely on.
What’s next
In March 2024, prior to the recent provincial election, Premier David Eby said that the province is “committed to advancing the dissolution of the Vancouver park board in the next legislative session… we commit to advancing the requested Vancouver Charter changes to dissolve the park board in the next earliest legislative session,” according to the Vancouver Sun.
Now that Eby’s party has narrowly won another majority, it remains to be seen if he’ll follow through with that promise when the Legislative Assembly reconvenes in February.
Eby’s recently released mandate letters to the Minister of Local Governments, and the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, did not include any explicit mention of the park board or changes to the Vancouver Charter, indicating it’s not a high-level priority for the incoming BC NDP government.