Neil Malik
Vancouver mayor Ken Sim’s tax freeze is totally absurd – except when it isn't
Photo via X
The Topline
- The City of Vancouver has passed a 2026 budget that will include a freeze on municipal property taxes, more funding for the Vancouver Police Department, the elimination of 400 jobs, and cuts to a number of other departments
- Mayor Ken Sim is calling it a “ Zero Means Zero ” budget for the 2026 election year
- More than 600 people registered to speak about it at council meetings, compared to 10 or 20 people in recent years
A zero per cent tax is 100 per cent needed right now
Some people define “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
Each year, city councils across the country do the math and calculate the necessary property tax increase for the next fiscal year. In Vancouver, recent increases have been brutally high, with the past three budgets seeing tax hikes of 10.7, 7.28 and 3.9 per cent.
The cycle repeats every 12 months. Insanity.
Sim is breaking the cycle, challenging the status quo and saying enough is enough. “We have a responsibility to do everything we can to make life affordable for those who live and work in Vancouver,” said Sim .
Yes, it’s true that Sim’s ABC Vancouver majority council implemented some of the steepest tax increases in recent memory, with a truckload of money going to the Vancouver Police Department, including $5 million towards Task Force Barrage .
But when research shows 80 per cent of people living, working, or regularly visiting Vancouver are concerned about crime in the city, it’s a strong argument that the funds were needed. Downtown Eastside residents and business-owners have said they feel safer and have noticed a reduction in crime. Data from Statistics Canada backs that up, with a reduction in crime across the board in Vancouver from 2022 to 2024.
Increasing the police budget to improve street disorder required Sim’s council to make some tough choices. He now wants to prioritize affordability once again. “Thanks to these decisions, we are now in a strong financial position to deliver a more effective city hall and a more affordable Vancouver,” continued Sim.
It’s no secret Vancouver is brutally unaffordable. A report from Chapman University in California called Vancouver the fourth-most “impossibly unaffordable” housing market in the world. When was the last time the wallets of Vancouver taxpayers were spared, even just a bit?
By challenging council and staff to achieve a zero per cent increase, Sim is pushing staff to find and eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies and wastage in places that might otherwise fly under the radar.
At the very least, Sim is breaking the cycle of insanity: Another year of a council hoping for a tax break, with no substantial change to get there. But Sim is not, and never was , a textbook politician. He’s not afraid to be a different kind of mayor.
Council may never ultimately get to zero per cent at the end of the day. But if Sim sets the bar high by finally applying some major pressure to make things leaner, that’s not a bad thing.
ABC promised transparency… LOL
In ABC Vancouver’s 2022 campaign platform , “Transparency, Accountability, and Good Government” was a key objective.
Fast forward to 2025. Sim’s budgets display a track record of ignoring all of those things.
To start with, there’s little transparency here, with council voting on a proposed budget without the typical line-by-line detail showing where cuts would be made to fund the tax break. Councillor Sean Orr called the document “opaque.”
Councillor Pete Fry, Vancouver’s longest serving councillor, told 1130 NewsRadio, “It’s an astounding lack of detail, and it makes it impossible for an informed decision to be made.”
Let’s move on to accountability. Sim’s ABC party has never been one for that, always blaming something else.
As far back as 2023, within months of winning a majority, ABC councillors passed a 10.7 per cent tax increase, blaming the previous council for leaving them a dumpster fire that needed extinguishing.
In 2024, after passing a 7.28 per cent increase, Sim blamed the economy. “We are in a highly inflationary environment. It is what it is," he said.
Outside of the budget, when the city’s integrity commissioner (the same office that ABC tried to shut down the year prior) found that ABC councillors violated policy by holding secret meetings, Sim brushed that off too. “That is how thoughtful and effective decisions are made. It is not misconduct.”
Don’t forget the gym debacle. It quietly went away without any kind of admission from Sim that converting a meeting room at city hall into your own private gym was terrible optics.
Last but not least, a zero per cent tax increase sounds like good governance, but is it really?
The city’s arts, culture, planning, and sustainability budget will be reduced by millions and 400 well-paid city jobs will be cut .
Many parks and recreation fees, parking permit fees, traffic fines, and special event permit fees are all going up. So are residents actually saving money after all the fee increases are factored into it?
Ultimately, there’s a reason cities often raise taxes each year, at least to cover inflation. Cities have to pay for things like annual wage increases that are part of collective agreements, price increases from external vendors, fuel costs, etc. It all goes up.
Victoria city councillor Jeremy Caradonna told CTV Vancouver the ramifications of a zero per cent increase are no joke. Five years later, his city is still trying to catch up.
“It essentially created a $4.7 million deficit. And that deficit has only been compounded in the last five or six years,” he added. “I think people need to understand that when you push pause on property taxes, all the costs that come to local government don’t just magically disappear”
TL;DR: Sim’s council passed some of Vancouver’s largest tax increases in recent memory since getting elected. Suddenly he’s magically proclaiming a zero per cent increase is realistic, and his government will be more efficient . Just in time for an election year.
