Vancouver city council voted not to sanction Mayor Ken Sim after an independent investigation found he had misused the influence of his office to harass Councillor Sean Orr.
Council voted 6–4 on June 2 against implementing any of the measures recommended by Integrity Commissioner investigator Jamie Pytel, whose report concluded that Sim had harassed Orr during a press conference held in April of last year.
All six members of Sim’s ABC party voted against sanctioning the mayor, while the other four voted to take action against him in response to Pytel’s findings. Sim recused himself from the vote after declaring a conflict of interest.
Controversy
Pytel’s report, dated May 11, investigated a complaint filed by Orr in October of last year.
Orr, a member of the Coalition of Progressive Electors, said that Sim had targeted him in an April 8 press conference following Orr’s April 5 byelection victory.
Years prior to being elected to city council, Orr had posted a comment on social media in 2021 reading: “Everyone knows Vancouver city planners are controlled by a secret cabal of Jews who have a bunker in the earths core fml.”
Sim referenced Orr’s social media comments saying they could be seen as “hateful” by the Jewish community.
“As Mayor of the City of Vancouver, I do have a duty to ensure that as a city, we are not divided by rhetoric or hate and recently, multiple past incidents of social commentary by Councillor-Elect Sean Orr have come to light,” Sim said at the press conference.
“Many of these posts can be only viewed as incendiary or hateful by the Jewish community and other communities.”
For his part, Orr responded to controversy by saying the post had been taken out of context. He said it had been a sarcastic reference to a joke by comedian David Cross and had actually been posted in response to condemning anti-Semitism.
“In 2021, I sarcastically quoted comedian David Cross while condemning an antisemitic dog whistle on Twitter,” Orr said in his defence.
Report
In his report, Pytel found that Sim’s comments at the press conference had been “more a personal calling out of Councillor Orr” than an attempt to stand up against anti-Semitism.
The report concluded that what transpired amounted to harassment of Orr by portraying him as anti-Semitic or likely to incite hatred against Jewish people.
“This created a hostile environment for him as a newly elected Councillor,” Pytel concluded.
The report also found that Sim had engaged in further harassment of Orr when he posted in October 2025 criticizing Orr for taking part in a pro-Palestinian rally in Vancouver.
Sim said he was “incredibly disappointed” to see Orr attend the rally because it was linked to Samidoun, also referred to as the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Canada designated Samidoun as a terrorist entity in 2024 due to its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
“I am incredibly disappointed to see Councillor Sean Orr participating at a Samidoun-affiliated rally in Vancouver,” Sim wrote.
“Samidoun is a terrorist organization. Anti-semitism has NO place in Vancouver. Celebrating Hamas has NO place in Vancouver. I call on all local elected officials to condemn this behaviour.”
Sim said his post calling out Orr for attending the rally was conveying concerns he’d heard from members of Vancouver’s Jewish community and was motivated by his opposition to anti-Semitism. However, Pytel concluded that the post was part of a pattern of harassment against Orr from Sim that broke the city’s code of conduct.
Recommendations
Pytel’s report recommended that Sim apologize to Orr within two weeks. If this did not occur, he advised publishing a formal letter of reprimand against Sim.
It also brought up other possible sanctions including requiring Sim to attend training or counselling, ejecting Sim from council-appointed committees, and a formal public declaration of disapproval being issued by council.
“The grave nature and wide-ranging impact of making the comments at the Press Conference, which was attended by the media and widely reported, and the reach of the Social Media Post, are relevant to any sanction,” Pytel said in his report.
For his part, Sim rejected the report’s findings, saying his criticism of Orr has been part of a justified response and “duty” to stand in solidarity with Vancouver’s Jewish community in response to growing anti-Semitism in Canada.
“My comments were made against the backdrop of a wave of rising anti-Semitism and hate across Canada,” he said following the release of the report. “All elected officials have a responsibility to speak out when a segment of our city feels targeted and unsafe.”
“I reject the claim that it was not my duty as mayor to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish residents of Vancouver,” Sim added.
The Jewish Federation of B.C. also disagreed with Pytel’s conclusions, as did the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
Defamation Lawsuit
The city council’s decision not to sanction Sim comes amid an ongoing clash between the mayor and Orr over a defamation lawsuit Orr initiated this past March.
The lawsuit accuses Sim of defamation against Orr due to comments Sim made in February to Chinese-language media in which he falsely said that Orr had been handing out illegal drugs on Christmas Day.
Sim later apologized for his accusations and said he had based them on seeing an unverified photograph. He said his comments against Orr were not done “deliberately, maliciously or in bad faith” and added that the accusation did not harm Orr’s reputation.
None of the allegations in the lawsuit have been proven in court.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
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