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Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim held an emergency meeting with the city manager and police chief on Thursday, after a bizarre public hearing that received many calls from the United States.
People from outside Vancouver and even outside Canada called into a public hearing on the city’s controversial villages plan.
Councillors grilled the callers on their reason for phoning in and if they had any connection to Vancouver.
The plan would rezone 17 single-family neighbourhoods to allow six-storey multi-unit buildings.
With the influx of callers, Wednesday’s public hearing went from morning to midnight.
“We do not want that democratic institution disturbed or disrupted,” Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said, calling it an act of foreign interference.
“Individuals who have no connection to Canada, who have no connection to Vancouver, who are calling from a foreign country to clog up our system. That’s where people will lose confidence,” Sim added.
A B.C. hospitality union, Unite Here Local 40, says it organized some of the out-of-town speakers, including some from California.
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The union argues that the villages plan benefits developers without guaranteeing affordable housing.
“I think it’s just bad form to encourage this as an active campaign, and it does not benefit anyone perhaps other than donors or interested parties,” said Pete Fry, a Vancouver city councillor with the Green Party.
“But it certainly doesn’t impact the outcome of our decision making.”
Vancouver police confirmed they are investigating and say if the calls meet the threshold of foreign interference, they could be referred to the RCMP.
“We’re going to take it seriously because we can’t have people interfering, if that’s the case, in our institutions, in our city, in what’s going on locally that impacts you and I from somewhere abroad,” Chief Const. Steve Rai with the Vancouver Police Department, said.
“So we’re going to look at that seriously.”
Sim is asking the province to amend the Vancouver Charter so only Canadians can register to speak at public hearings.
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