BURST
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said he apologized to Coun. Sean Orr for claiming his fellow council member had distributed illegal drugs during Christmas.
During a scrum with reporters at an unrelated event on Friday, Sim said he had spoken with the COPE councillor on Thursday and apologized for his comments.
When pressed for more details on how he came to make the accusation against Orr, Sim repeated himself several times with the same statement.
“At the end of the day, I called Coun. Orr and I did apologize for my comments.”
Then: “I truly believe that I apologized — look, I called Coun. Orr and I apologized for my comments.”
Sim’s apology came a day after a video surfaced of the mayor telling Chinese-language media at city hall on Feb. 6 that “we have a councillor, Sean Orr, just this Christmas, who was handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day to people on the streets.”
Sim made the comment in English. The video of the news briefing was obtained by CityNews and published online.
The controversy about Sim’s comments comes days after his ABC Vancouver colleague, Coun. Lenny Zhou, apologized for making similar statements captured in a Chinese-language video describing non-ABC councillors as drug users and dealers.
Zhou has since apologized for those comments and retracted the statement.
At the time, Sim thanked Zhou for “acknowledging his mistake.”