BURST
The City of Vancouver spent $6 million on severance payouts last year for departing non-unionized employees. That is more than the combined total of the previous several years, and likely a single-year record.
It’s not surprising City Hall is spending more on severance, after the ABC Vancouver party’s budget cuts were expected to reduce the city workforce by around 400 full-time jobs, which included 79 severance agreements in 2025, the highest annual total on record.
But it was not previously known how much last year’s number of severance payouts would actually cost taxpayers. The city refused to disclose the total dollar figure, which Postmedia obtained by filing a freedom of information request.
ABC’s political rivals are blasting the majority party and Mayor Ken Sim for what they call a reckless approach to staffing reductions, saying it should never have required a journalist’s freedom of information request to let taxpayers know how much they spent on severance.
Sim’s office has said it was not involved in City Hall’s decision this year to refuse to disclose the cost of the previous year’s severance payments, information that Vancouver, and other cities, had released in past years without requiring a formal request.
“Our focus is on ensuring City Hall operates more efficiently and effectively,” the mayor’s office said in an emailed statement Monday. “While organizational changes can involve one-time costs, those decisions are made with the goal of reducing long-term operating costs, improving service delivery and providing better value for taxpayers.”
Last year, ABC directed staff to find $120 million in cost reductions, as well as additional revenues for 2026, to support the final operating budget of the current four-year term before this October’s election. This was done with the aim of achieving a zero per cent property tax increase for this year, and ABC and Sim repeatedly called it their “zero means zero” budget.
This shift toward austerity followed a period of significant hiring at City Hall — and accompanying property tax hikes — under ABC’s watch, and the increases were not limited to the public safety roles that ABC promised during the 2022 campaign to do additional hiring. Vancouver’s most recent city service plan report shows the municipal workforce increased from 8,828 full-time-equivalent jobs in 2022 to an estimated 9,666 for last year, an jump of nearly 10 per cent.
As ABC promised, there were increases during those years to the police department (from 1,922 employees to 2,060) and fire department (865 to 926). But there were also significant increases during the first three years of ABC’s mandate to other departments: arts, culture and community services grew from 398 to 446 full-time jobs, and parks and recreation went from 1,103 to 1,239 full-time jobs. The city department listed as “corporate services” grew more than any other, increasing almost 12 per cent, from 1,320 full-time positions in 2022 to an estimated 1,474 last year.
The way City Hall is now slashing jobs, through both voluntary buyouts and involuntary layoffs, is costly and reckless, ABC’s political opponents say.
“Sim talks a good game about saving money, but his shoot-from-the-hip-while-blindfolded approach to running our city is reckless and incredibly frustrating,” said Green Coun. Pete Fry, who is running against Sim for mayor this October. “We predicted Ken’s hasty ‘zero means zero’ budget charade would result in decreased services, increased fees, an extraordinary spike in severance payouts … and now here we are.”
Fry said the cuts have led to service reductions, including the elimination of municipal workers focused on sex worker safety, while City Hall has increased fees for parking, permits, and licenses.
Coun. Rebecca Bligh, Vote Vancouver’s mayoral candidate, called the $6 million in severance payments “an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money.”
“While some turnover is expected during periods of transition, costs at this scale demand an explanation,” Bligh said.
“It’s also troubling that taxpayers will only learn the total through a freedom of information request. The city should be proactively disclosing significant expenditures like these, not withholding them from public view. Residents deserve answers about what drove these costs and whether they point to broader management issues at City Hall.”
COPE’s mayoral candidate Stephanie Allen said in an emailed statement: “With so many experienced public servants gone, is this about better services, or about replacing them with politically aligned insiders at City Hall?”
Kareem Allam, who was ABC’s campaign manager in the last election and is running for mayor this year with the new Vancouver Liberals party, criticized Sim and ABC for not following through on a 2022 campaign promise to release a detailed line-item budget to promote financial transparency.
“Ken Sim doesn’t have a plan,” Allam said. “What services did he cut to pay for this $6 million of severance costs?”
The city declined to answer Monday how many workers have been laid off so far in 2026, saying that information will be included in next year’s statement of financial information. But cuts have continued this year, and there have been some high-profile, senior employees departing City Hall. Just in the last two months, Vancouver parted ways with its city clerk , deputy city clerk, chief building official , and chief procurement officer .
Every B.C. municipality is required by law to publicly report the number of severance agreements it enters into each year, among other financial details, in its annual statement of financial information. However, cities aren’t required to release the total dollar figure for those severance agreements, but they can choose to do so, as Vancouver and other cities did last year with the 2024 numbers.
Vancouver’s statement of financial information released in April revealed the city entered 79 severance agreements last year with non-union workers. That is as many as the previous seven years combined, and almost nine times the annual average of the previous 22 years, which is as far back as the records go on the city’s website. There was a wide range in the amount of severance paid out to different ex-employees — last year’s agreements ranged from the equivalent of one month’s gross monthly salary to two years.