Report finds Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim misused influence, harassed councillor Sean Orr - BERITAJA

An interrogator has recovered that Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim “misused the influence of his office” and harassed a councillor in usurpation of the council’s codification of conduct.

The report dated Monday was based connected an investigation by Jamie Pytel of Kingsgate Legal, who was retained by the metropolis to look into the title made by Coun. Sean Orr in October 2025.

Orr’s title was about a news convention held by Sim at Vancouver City Hall successful April 2025, arsenic good arsenic a societal media station made by the mayor later that twelvemonth that represented Orr as antisemitic.

The report released Thursday finds that Sim’s disapproval of Orr at the news convention was “more a individual calling out” of the councillor, alternatively than trying to protect the Jewish organization against dislike crimes.

The clash between Sim and Orr continued and successful March Orr launched a suit against the mayor for mendacious comments to Chinese-language reporters about the councillor handing retired narcotics connected Christmas Day.

Sim has apologized for those comments, saying he saw an unverified photo, and said successful his ineligible defence that the mendacious declare did not harm Orr’s reputation.

The report says that Sim’s comments connected societal media about Orr last twelvemonth were a continuation of the harassment aft the news conference, successful usurpation of the codification of conduct.

Pytel is recommending a petition for the mayor to apologize aliases for imaginable different sanctions against him.

“Holding the property convention was not portion of Mayor Sim’s duties,” the interrogator says. “Using the influence of his agency to personally onslaught Coun. Orr was a misuse of the influence of his office.”

There is capable accusation that Sim objectively harassed Orr at the April 8, 2025, news convention erstwhile he personally attacked the councillor by suggesting he was antisemitic aliases would incite unit aliases hatred, the report says.

Sim referred to societal media posts Orr made years earlier he was elected, and said that arsenic the mayor he had a work to guarantee arsenic a metropolis that “we are not divided by rhetoric aliases hate,” the report says.

In a statement, Sim says he has seen the report and “respectfully” disagrees pinch the conclusions.

“My comments were made against the backdrop of a activity of rising antisemitism and dislike crossed Canada,” he says.

“All elected officials person a work to speak retired erstwhile a conception of our metropolis feels targeted and unsafe. I cull the declare that it was not my work as mayor to guidelines shoulder-to-shoulder pinch the Jewish residents of Vancouver.”

The report says Sim told the interrogator that the concerns he raised about Orr’s comments “were not his interpretations … but were the Jewish community’s interpretations.”

The interrogator recovered that contradicted pinch what the mayor said during the news conference, including that Orr’s societal media posts “hit him to his core.”

Sam Smart, co-chair of the COPE statement that Orr represents on Vancouver council, says successful a connection that Sim’s behaviour “is portion of a shape of harmful and personally targeted conduct” against the councillor, and it needs to stop.